Unless their reactor is some really bizarre or shoddy design then yes, reactors can scram in less than 10 seconds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
In PWRs, the control rods are held above a reactor's core by electric motors against both their own weight and a powerful spring. Any cutting of the electric current releases the rods. Another design uses electromagnets to hold the rods suspended, with any cut to electric current resulting in an immediate and automatic control rod insertion. A SCRAM mechanism is designed to release the control rods from those motors and allows their weight and the spring to drive them into the reactor core, in four seconds or less, thus rapidly halting the nuclear reaction by absorbing liberated neutrons. In BWRs, the control rods are inserted up from underneath the reactor vessel. In this case a hydraulic control unit with a pressurized storage tank provides the force to rapidly insert the control rods upon any interruption of the electric current, again within four seconds.
Once the rods are inserted, the reactor is deeply subcritical and so due to the exponential nature of nuclear physics the reaction dies away in fractions of a second. Perhaps of interest to you might be to know that Chernobyl's RBMK reactor was neither a PWR nor a BWR. It was a graphite-moderated water-cooled reactor with very serious design flaws that made its operation inherently dangerous (it was basically a scaled-up plutonium-production reactor, for which safety was never a primary concern).
Riiiight. The beauty about underground storage tanks is - they don't take up any excess space. As for fire zoning laws - depends on the country (Japan in the pic above, famous for its high-density urban areas). The beauty about a gas station is that you don't need to park there to fill up, so few are needed and their urban impact is pretty negligible. In any case, we're getting completely off topic, as my point wasn't that urban areas would be impacted by charging station size. It was the out-of-urban long-distance stations that would need to be of considerable size. Of course, outside of the city space is usually plentiful, but it's not free to purchase and free to develop. The associated costs of construction (e.g. pulling high-power lines, landscaping, paving, etc.) could be significantly higher - and that was my whole point.
You only need to install a few. Those who need a charge will park there.
And how do you imagine you'll enforce that? Or rapid turn-around, when the person leaves that spot as soon as possible after finishing charging. There's necessarily going to be some part encroachment by non-users.
It's BS to jump from the today to 100% EVs. The future gets built-out slowly
How slow is slow? 30 years? Urban infrastructure, especially roads and parking spaces, easily persists for half a century or more. Growth of cities at this point is pretty much only performed by people outside moving to them, not new births - in fact, in the west, overall population growth has been slowing down considerably in the last decade. So I'd wager that conversion, if it occurs, will not be due to construction of new infrastructure, it will be due to retrofitting old infrastructure. Now I'm not saying it can't be done - of course it can - my point is that we might get better bang for our buck if we reuse what existing infrastructure we have and change only the source of its input, rather than rebuilding the whole thing.
And for this future of yours, that's decades from now, for some reason you're using the high, early-adopter prices of these charging stations, today. Even you can't pretend that's fair.
The learning curve of charging systems is mostly non-existent. The components aren't high-tech and are already factory built. Once you're down to materials, bulk manufacturing and shipping & labor, costs are essentially flat. You perhaps didn't even notice that I already underestimated the cost of the Supercharger units (I assumed them at ~3x cheaper than Musk quoted).
Yeah, in fact, Star Trek's technological optimism is something that always gives hope - that we as humans will overcome our fear of the dangerous "new fire" and learn to harness its power while controlling its risks. In fact, the warp core's theoretical power output should easily dwarf the most dense nuclear power plants we have on Earth, yet the characters in the story were calm living within spitting distance of it, despite us having seen on the show numerous times that it could all go horribly wrong (Computer, eject the warp core!). I really resent a future of energy poverty and lack of ambition.
There's two types of parking spots:
- public parking spots are extremely cheap to build - basically involves pouring asphalt or concrete. Adding any charging & billing infrastructure to this will severely impact the cost to build.
- paid for parking spots are a little more pricey, requiring billing infrastructure already, but people don't want to stay there for very long (because it's paid), so fast-charging is required. For example, to top off a 24kWh Leaf takes about 8 hours on a 240V/16A socket, or about 10 miles per hour (or less for larger cars such as the Model S). This is obviously not good enough for paid parking spots, so you'd probably want a 20-40kW charging unit there, which requires expensive high-power AC-DC conversion and charging equipment. There's no way around this, it's just the basic physics of the system.
Basically, when you run the numbers on a large scale for these systems, they don't look pretty. Now it could be solved if:
- battery cost comes down significantly enough that you can get 200+ miles of range in a <$20k vehicle, so a significant amount of people can afford them, and
- fast-charging goes up to around 400-600 kW - at that charge rate, you don't need to build them all over the place, just in a few service stations in strategic locations around town, because people will be able to "top off" a significant amount of charge in about 5 minutes. Then you could do this without having to rebuild a significant amount of parking infrastructure, as existing service stations could simply replace a few of the pumps with charge points, much as they did when they added diesel.
Only when these two are met can I see EVs taking off in a big way across the world. We'll still have to deal with long-haul freight, but that is a smaller problem than personal mobility use. Until that point, EVs will largely remain a second car for quite (in the big picture) wealthy people who will nevertheless feel very good about themselves, despite not doing much of anything to deal with the problem at large.
Agreed, I don't like anecdotes and I wasn't the one who used an anecdote to buttress my points. My response here was to simply show that the argument being presented is a personal anecdote.
1. Depends on the type of trip. I don't do family trips but instead business and there I stop only when the tank is dry (after ~500 miles) and only for ~20 minutes. An EV that needs 30 minutes every 150 miles would cost me an additional >1 hour on top of that.
2. I'm well aware that the majority of charging done at home. However, here we were talking about Superchargers, which are for long trips, so I compared that to a gas station. Home chargers, are much slower, taking 4-8 hours typically to charge. This means you need to plan ahead. If the next morning you find out you need to make a long trip and didn't charge (or forgot to), you're stuffed. With a hydrocarbon fuel car, you don't need to do that. Oops? Empty tank? No problem, just do a quick 5 minute stop at the nearest service station and be on your way. It's the fact that a hydrocarbon car gets out of your way that makes them so convenient.
- There are no technical or environmental concerns to go forward with the planned project of the construction of the DME plant.
- Production cost (CAPEX/OPEX) is at a fairly attractive value taking into consideration the contribution to Icelandic society.
- This project is considered to be feasible, subject to a strong and dedicated support by the Icelandic government.
2.4 times more nuclear power plants and uranium mining
I happen to think that nuclear is the way forward, but not in its current form. We need high-temp reactors which give >700C waste heat - that's already good enough to give an appreciable contribution to high-temp electrolysis. Higher efficiency reactors use orders of magnitude less fuel and the waste heat from them is also a considerable resource, so yeah, there are ways to move forward without any increase in Uranium mining. Meanwhile, don't forget to account for lithium and cadmium (and other metal) mining and refinement in the accounting for batteries.
But that's the thing, an EV charge point is not just a power outlet. You need a billing system. You need a security and safety system. For fast-charges you need a high-power AC-DC converter substation. It's not just the outlet you have in your garage.
Yeah, but how long on average did their stop take? Of those, 20 people took an overall 10 minutes for the stop, including 5 minutes of waiting and for only 3 it took a total of 15 minutes (10 minutes waiting). So the total time taken to service these people (and top up a lot more range, of course) took 305 minutes.
Meanwhile, on the charger, all 35 users had to stop for 30 minutes, for a total of 1050 minutes. So even with 4.5x fewer pumps the stop times were overall 3x shorter. Again, the gas station is over an order of magnitude more efficient.
With electric, MOST people will fuel up, slowly, overnight, at home.
I was talking about long-range driving, i.e. by definition more than a pack can support. That's the designated target use of the supercharger network.
In addition, gas stations MUST be large and separate facilities you have to go out of your way to drive to/from.
No, they don't have to be large. The only reason they are large-ish is because they often double as convenience stores. Remove that, make the station just the pumps with card paying and they can be incredibly compact. Most of the time you also don't have to drive to and from them - they're placed conveniently along routes most people take frequently, so typically you just need to make a brief stop there once or twice a month for a couple of minutes.
EV charging stations can be (and ARE) just regular parking spaces with a small device at one corner.
Where the device costs a considerable amount of money. Musk himself said that a Supercharger station costs ~$150000, which for 4-6 charge points then brings the cost to ~$10k-$20k per point. You see the charge points aren't just your regular 220V/16A outlet, they're fairly smart units. They need to be fed by a high-powered AC-DC converter which needs to hook up to a high-power transformer substation, high-power cabling buried below the frost line, billing hardware at each point, security monitoring and connectivity and in places with solar charging the cost more than doubles due to the panels and li-ion batteries. Calculate the cost of adding that to almost every parking spot on a lot and the numbers for your construction project will take quite a hit. Keep in mind, I'm not talking about the occasional Tesla vehicle going by. I'm talking about a future where this is the dominant form of transport.
The article is neat, but I find the author is somewhat overoptimistic in assuming that 75% of the gen 3 model will be supercharger enabled. $2000 extra on a car that costs $70000 base is hardly going to break the bank. But on a car that costs less than half of that, it can significantly tip the scales of buyer choices. They're not the penny-pinching culprits that the sub-$20k market are, but still, $2k for an option of questionable use frequency is going to make a lot of people scratch their heads. Also, as they proliferate, they're going to have to deal with vandalism. A gas station is a neatly concentrated resource with oversight, security and even they still get vandalized. Imagine how attractive a target a parking lot with lots of shiny unattended charging stations is going to be?
And how much would that cost? At present building a parking lot is pretty much the cost of pouring the asphalt. You're proposing we turn a lot of those parking spots into pretty expensive charging stations with safety systems, billing systems and presumably security systems (to avert vandalism). And given the low cost of charging and resultant very tiny profit margins for the facilities providing the services, would it be economical for them to do so?
And what if I don't know? And even if I do know, why should I need to worry about prepping the car a day in advance for the trip? What is this, the 1960s? And if I do decide to make a detour, why should I have to worry about range and whether I'm gonna be able to limp back to the nearest public charging point? And once I'm there it may not be the type I need for a fast charge, so settle in boys, this is gonna take a few hours. That's why I think a good efficient gasoline or diesel car or even range-extended EV is such a great idea. The infrastructure is already in place, not need to rebuild it again. The technology is mature and we have lots invested in it. I have a real problem with Elon selling Tesla as "accelerating the advent of sustainable transport", as if EVs were the only way to do it. Like I said before, the fuel isn't the issue, it's the source of the fuel. Make that source zero CO2 and the need for EVs disappears.
Also most of the time most people (who consider getting an EV anyway) will have a gas station in their garage/parking spot
And what about people who live in densely populated urban areas without private parking spots? Are they simply stuffed because they can't afford to move to the suburbs? Unless somebody invents a super-high-density battery that allows quick recharging (in a matter of minutes - perhaps by pumping and replacing the electrolyte or a liquid electrode), people are going to remain with high-energy-density hydrocarbon fuels.
For my last vehicle purchase I strongly considered an EV like the Leaf, but unfortunately that was simply a non-starter. Massively expensive and very limited in range and where I live the charging opportunities are very few and far between, not to speak of not having a place to charge it at home (I live in an apartment building, like most people in the city). Even if I did have a place to charge it at home, I would be severely limited in where I could travel with it, always having to worry about availability of public charging points or rigging up something non-standard. And when I had an honest look at the expense, how clumsy it would be and that it was the only car in my family, well, I decided for a hybrid instead.
If everyone starts driving EVs, they wont all need to charge at a charging station.
Which is why I said "long-distance highway". I'm quite aware that with EVs you wouldn't want to do all of your charging on public charge points (in fact, that's another big problem with EVs in urban areas without private parking, but it's besides the point subject here).
The only places you need quick-charge station are places where people will be traveling long distances.
Which is why I said "long-distance highway". I'm quite aware that with EVs you wouldn't want to do all of your charging on public charge points (in fact, that's another big problem with EVs in urban areas without private parking, but it's besides the point subject here).
Tesla superchargers are free because there's not that many of them around and the Model S is incredibly expensive, so there's markup left over for them to do this. Believe you me that once they start rolling out the "el-cheapo" (well, still Mercedes/BMW-type money) model and start producing in large volumes, it won't be free no more.
As far as I could discern, in the 11 days listed here all they did was install the charging ports at a place which already had suitable electrical infrastructure (at a hotel parking lot). It wasn't a full service station in the middle of nowhere. Also, look at service capacity. It takes ~30 minutes to "refuel" a Tesla Model S with 150 miles of extra range. A gas station, meanwhile, will easily do 400+ miles in less than 5 minutes, so it has about 16x higher overall throughput - for a single gas pump you'd need to install about 16 charging stations. Now of course gas stations don't always have fully occupied pumps and that's the point, so that almost whenever you arrive, there's a free pump available. Replace all the cars on the long-distance highway with EVs and you'll need a service station about an order of magnitude larger in size (i.e. your typical 12-pump gas station becomes a parking lot with over 100 chargers). Hydrocarbon fuels have their advantages and high energy density is one of them. The problem isn't the fuel itself, it's the source. If we made hydrocarbon fuels (e.g. dimethyl ether) from electricity in a carbon-neutral way, you could view them as a very dense chemical battery with pretty much infinite cycles, no charge loss, insanely quick recharge times and all support infrastructure already in place.
Founded in 1993 in Alexandria, Va., by brothers David and Tom Gardner, The Motley Fool is a multimedia financial-services company dedicated to building the world's greatest investment community.
And these guys put up an article about the bright future of the technology of a company they hold stock in. Don't you see that as a bit of a conflict of interest? Of course they're not terribly motivated to mention the potential downsides and limitations of the technology. From where they're standing, it's all peaches and roses!
This isn't news for nerds, it's a promotional piece for a product (Tesla stock).
Tesla Motors, Inc. Is Itching for More and Better Batteries by: Anders Bylund
And then at the very bottom of the article:
Anders Bylund owns shares of Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors and Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.
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In PWRs, the control rods are held above a reactor's core by electric motors against both their own weight and a powerful spring. Any cutting of the electric current releases the rods. Another design uses electromagnets to hold the rods suspended, with any cut to electric current resulting in an immediate and automatic control rod insertion. A SCRAM mechanism is designed to release the control rods from those motors and allows their weight and the spring to drive them into the reactor core, in four seconds or less, thus rapidly halting the nuclear reaction by absorbing liberated neutrons. In BWRs, the control rods are inserted up from underneath the reactor vessel. In this case a hydraulic control unit with a pressurized storage tank provides the force to rapidly insert the control rods upon any interruption of the electric current, again within four seconds.
Once the rods are inserted, the reactor is deeply subcritical and so due to the exponential nature of nuclear physics the reaction dies away in fractions of a second. Perhaps of interest to you might be to know that Chernobyl's RBMK reactor was neither a PWR nor a BWR. It was a graphite-moderated water-cooled reactor with very serious design flaws that made its operation inherently dangerous (it was basically a scaled-up plutonium-production reactor, for which safety was never a primary concern).
You're assuming capital cost parity. How much did your vehicle actually cost to buy?
There's no way in hell anybody with more than a single-digit IQ
What's with the passive-aggresive nonsense? Calm down dude, you'll pop a vein, it's not good for your health.
No you weren't,
You don't get to speak for me.
Not a chance. They're all large
Riiiight. The beauty about underground storage tanks is - they don't take up any excess space. As for fire zoning laws - depends on the country (Japan in the pic above, famous for its high-density urban areas). The beauty about a gas station is that you don't need to park there to fill up, so few are needed and their urban impact is pretty negligible. In any case, we're getting completely off topic, as my point wasn't that urban areas would be impacted by charging station size. It was the out-of-urban long-distance stations that would need to be of considerable size. Of course, outside of the city space is usually plentiful, but it's not free to purchase and free to develop. The associated costs of construction (e.g. pulling high-power lines, landscaping, paving, etc.) could be significantly higher - and that was my whole point.
You only need to install a few. Those who need a charge will park there.
And how do you imagine you'll enforce that? Or rapid turn-around, when the person leaves that spot as soon as possible after finishing charging. There's necessarily going to be some part encroachment by non-users.
It's BS to jump from the today to 100% EVs. The future gets built-out slowly
How slow is slow? 30 years? Urban infrastructure, especially roads and parking spaces, easily persists for half a century or more. Growth of cities at this point is pretty much only performed by people outside moving to them, not new births - in fact, in the west, overall population growth has been slowing down considerably in the last decade. So I'd wager that conversion, if it occurs, will not be due to construction of new infrastructure, it will be due to retrofitting old infrastructure. Now I'm not saying it can't be done - of course it can - my point is that we might get better bang for our buck if we reuse what existing infrastructure we have and change only the source of its input, rather than rebuilding the whole thing.
And for this future of yours, that's decades from now, for some reason you're using the high, early-adopter prices of these charging stations, today. Even you can't pretend that's fair.
The learning curve of charging systems is mostly non-existent. The components aren't high-tech and are already factory built. Once you're down to materials, bulk manufacturing and shipping & labor, costs are essentially flat. You perhaps didn't even notice that I already underestimated the cost of the Supercharger units (I assumed them at ~3x cheaper than Musk quoted).
Or your image, so that you're seen as eco-aware and hip.
Yeah, in fact, Star Trek's technological optimism is something that always gives hope - that we as humans will overcome our fear of the dangerous "new fire" and learn to harness its power while controlling its risks. In fact, the warp core's theoretical power output should easily dwarf the most dense nuclear power plants we have on Earth, yet the characters in the story were calm living within spitting distance of it, despite us having seen on the show numerous times that it could all go horribly wrong (Computer, eject the warp core!). I really resent a future of energy poverty and lack of ambition.
There's two types of parking spots:
- public parking spots are extremely cheap to build - basically involves pouring asphalt or concrete. Adding any charging & billing infrastructure to this will severely impact the cost to build.
- paid for parking spots are a little more pricey, requiring billing infrastructure already, but people don't want to stay there for very long (because it's paid), so fast-charging is required. For example, to top off a 24kWh Leaf takes about 8 hours on a 240V/16A socket, or about 10 miles per hour (or less for larger cars such as the Model S). This is obviously not good enough for paid parking spots, so you'd probably want a 20-40kW charging unit there, which requires expensive high-power AC-DC conversion and charging equipment. There's no way around this, it's just the basic physics of the system.
Basically, when you run the numbers on a large scale for these systems, they don't look pretty. Now it could be solved if:
- battery cost comes down significantly enough that you can get 200+ miles of range in a <$20k vehicle, so a significant amount of people can afford them, and
- fast-charging goes up to around 400-600 kW - at that charge rate, you don't need to build them all over the place, just in a few service stations in strategic locations around town, because people will be able to "top off" a significant amount of charge in about 5 minutes. Then you could do this without having to rebuild a significant amount of parking infrastructure, as existing service stations could simply replace a few of the pumps with charge points, much as they did when they added diesel.
Only when these two are met can I see EVs taking off in a big way across the world. We'll still have to deal with long-haul freight, but that is a smaller problem than personal mobility use. Until that point, EVs will largely remain a second car for quite (in the big picture) wealthy people who will nevertheless feel very good about themselves, despite not doing much of anything to deal with the problem at large.
We'll see, though.
I agree. I'm skeptical they can make it work at scale, but hope for the best, after all, I too enjoy the quiet of driving my hybrid in EV mode.
Agreed, I don't like anecdotes and I wasn't the one who used an anecdote to buttress my points. My response here was to simply show that the argument being presented is a personal anecdote.
That's why I said "make that source zero CO2" - carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels.
1. Depends on the type of trip. I don't do family trips but instead business and there I stop only when the tank is dry (after ~500 miles) and only for ~20 minutes. An EV that needs 30 minutes every 150 miles would cost me an additional >1 hour on top of that.
2. I'm well aware that the majority of charging done at home. However, here we were talking about Superchargers, which are for long trips, so I compared that to a gas station. Home chargers, are much slower, taking 4-8 hours typically to charge. This means you need to plan ahead. If the next morning you find out you need to make a long trip and didn't charge (or forgot to), you're stuffed. With a hydrocarbon fuel car, you don't need to do that. Oops? Empty tank? No problem, just do a quick 5 minute stop at the nearest service station and be on your way. It's the fact that a hydrocarbon car gets out of your way that makes them so convenient.
3. Here's a paper on its production by way of electrolysis of water and CO2. Iceland has conducted a feasibility study with the following conclusions:
- There are no technical or environmental concerns to go forward with the planned project of the construction of the DME plant.
- Production cost (CAPEX/OPEX) is at a fairly attractive value taking into consideration the contribution to Icelandic society.
- This project is considered to be feasible, subject to a strong and dedicated support by the Icelandic government.
2.4 times more nuclear power plants and uranium mining
I happen to think that nuclear is the way forward, but not in its current form. We need high-temp reactors which give >700C waste heat - that's already good enough to give an appreciable contribution to high-temp electrolysis. Higher efficiency reactors use orders of magnitude less fuel and the waste heat from them is also a considerable resource, so yeah, there are ways to move forward without any increase in Uranium mining. Meanwhile, don't forget to account for lithium and cadmium (and other metal) mining and refinement in the accounting for batteries.
building power outlets
But that's the thing, an EV charge point is not just a power outlet. You need a billing system. You need a security and safety system. For fast-charges you need a high-power AC-DC converter substation. It's not just the outlet you have in your garage.
in my experience
Your experience is different from my experience.
With the gas station, 23 people needed to wait
Yeah, but how long on average did their stop take? Of those, 20 people took an overall 10 minutes for the stop, including 5 minutes of waiting and for only 3 it took a total of 15 minutes (10 minutes waiting). So the total time taken to service these people (and top up a lot more range, of course) took 305 minutes.
Meanwhile, on the charger, all 35 users had to stop for 30 minutes, for a total of 1050 minutes. So even with 4.5x fewer pumps the stop times were overall 3x shorter. Again, the gas station is over an order of magnitude more efficient.
With electric, MOST people will fuel up, slowly, overnight, at home.
I was talking about long-range driving, i.e. by definition more than a pack can support. That's the designated target use of the supercharger network.
In addition, gas stations MUST be large and separate facilities you have to go out of your way to drive to/from.
No, they don't have to be large. The only reason they are large-ish is because they often double as convenience stores. Remove that, make the station just the pumps with card paying and they can be incredibly compact. Most of the time you also don't have to drive to and from them - they're placed conveniently along routes most people take frequently, so typically you just need to make a brief stop there once or twice a month for a couple of minutes.
EV charging stations can be (and ARE) just regular parking spaces with a small device at one corner.
Where the device costs a considerable amount of money. Musk himself said that a Supercharger station costs ~$150000, which for 4-6 charge points then brings the cost to ~$10k-$20k per point. You see the charge points aren't just your regular 220V/16A outlet, they're fairly smart units. They need to be fed by a high-powered AC-DC converter which needs to hook up to a high-power transformer substation, high-power cabling buried below the frost line, billing hardware at each point, security monitoring and connectivity and in places with solar charging the cost more than doubles due to the panels and li-ion batteries. Calculate the cost of adding that to almost every parking spot on a lot and the numbers for your construction project will take quite a hit. Keep in mind, I'm not talking about the occasional Tesla vehicle going by. I'm talking about a future where this is the dominant form of transport.
The article is neat, but I find the author is somewhat overoptimistic in assuming that 75% of the gen 3 model will be supercharger enabled. $2000 extra on a car that costs $70000 base is hardly going to break the bank. But on a car that costs less than half of that, it can significantly tip the scales of buyer choices. They're not the penny-pinching culprits that the sub-$20k market are, but still, $2k for an option of questionable use frequency is going to make a lot of people scratch their heads. Also, as they proliferate, they're going to have to deal with vandalism. A gas station is a neatly concentrated resource with oversight, security and even they still get vandalized. Imagine how attractive a target a parking lot with lots of shiny unattended charging stations is going to be?
And how much would that cost? At present building a parking lot is pretty much the cost of pouring the asphalt. You're proposing we turn a lot of those parking spots into pretty expensive charging stations with safety systems, billing systems and presumably security systems (to avert vandalism). And given the low cost of charging and resultant very tiny profit margins for the facilities providing the services, would it be economical for them to do so?
Also most of the time most people (who consider getting an EV anyway) will have a gas station in their garage/parking spot
And what about people who live in densely populated urban areas without private parking spots? Are they simply stuffed because they can't afford to move to the suburbs? Unless somebody invents a super-high-density battery that allows quick recharging (in a matter of minutes - perhaps by pumping and replacing the electrolyte or a liquid electrode), people are going to remain with high-energy-density hydrocarbon fuels.
For my last vehicle purchase I strongly considered an EV like the Leaf, but unfortunately that was simply a non-starter. Massively expensive and very limited in range and where I live the charging opportunities are very few and far between, not to speak of not having a place to charge it at home (I live in an apartment building, like most people in the city). Even if I did have a place to charge it at home, I would be severely limited in where I could travel with it, always having to worry about availability of public charging points or rigging up something non-standard. And when I had an honest look at the expense, how clumsy it would be and that it was the only car in my family, well, I decided for a hybrid instead.
Oh sure, but then, if you can afford a $70000+ car, fuel costs aren't probably all that much of an issue for you anyway.
If everyone starts driving EVs, they wont all need to charge at a charging station.
Which is why I said "long-distance highway". I'm quite aware that with EVs you wouldn't want to do all of your charging on public charge points (in fact, that's another big problem with EVs in urban areas without private parking, but it's besides the point subject here).
The only places you need quick-charge station are places where people will be traveling long distances.
Which is why I said "long-distance highway". I'm quite aware that with EVs you wouldn't want to do all of your charging on public charge points (in fact, that's another big problem with EVs in urban areas without private parking, but it's besides the point subject here).
Tesla superchargers are free because there's not that many of them around and the Model S is incredibly expensive, so there's markup left over for them to do this. Believe you me that once they start rolling out the "el-cheapo" (well, still Mercedes/BMW-type money) model and start producing in large volumes, it won't be free no more.
As far as I could discern, in the 11 days listed here all they did was install the charging ports at a place which already had suitable electrical infrastructure (at a hotel parking lot). It wasn't a full service station in the middle of nowhere. Also, look at service capacity. It takes ~30 minutes to "refuel" a Tesla Model S with 150 miles of extra range. A gas station, meanwhile, will easily do 400+ miles in less than 5 minutes, so it has about 16x higher overall throughput - for a single gas pump you'd need to install about 16 charging stations. Now of course gas stations don't always have fully occupied pumps and that's the point, so that almost whenever you arrive, there's a free pump available. Replace all the cars on the long-distance highway with EVs and you'll need a service station about an order of magnitude larger in size (i.e. your typical 12-pump gas station becomes a parking lot with over 100 chargers). Hydrocarbon fuels have their advantages and high energy density is one of them. The problem isn't the fuel itself, it's the source. If we made hydrocarbon fuels (e.g. dimethyl ether) from electricity in a carbon-neutral way, you could view them as a very dense chemical battery with pretty much infinite cycles, no charge loss, insanely quick recharge times and all support infrastructure already in place.
Motley Fool gets points for being upfront and disclosing their investments, so you can judge for yourself. A lot of news places don't do that.
Agree there, I don't like it when journalists take positions without declaring it and trying to put up an objective pretense.
Founded in 1993 in Alexandria, Va., by brothers David and Tom Gardner, The Motley Fool is a multimedia financial-services company dedicated to building the world's greatest investment community.
And these guys put up an article about the bright future of the technology of a company they hold stock in. Don't you see that as a bit of a conflict of interest? Of course they're not terribly motivated to mention the potential downsides and limitations of the technology. From where they're standing, it's all peaches and roses!
This isn't news for nerds, it's a promotional piece for a product (Tesla stock).
Tesla Motors, Inc. Is Itching for More and Better Batteries by: Anders Bylund
And then at the very bottom of the article:
Anders Bylund owns shares of Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors and Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.
God I hate these ad pieces disguised as news.