I told her as long as her current car was safe and dependable, don't go buy a new car to "save money".
Probably sound advice in most cases, but your analysis is assuming a trade-in value of $0.
Batteries have to be replaced every 5 years.
Buy whatever you want, but please stop spewing bullshit. Battery replacement is so infrequent (even in mild hybrids that have been around more than a decade) that there isn't even enough data to calculate a meaningful MTBF. Either you're trolling with the 5-year battery replacement line, or you've fallen for a troll.
I am *personally* driving a pure electric with a battery nearing its sixth birthday, and it is still almost as good as new.
All of the extra nasty non-green things that goes into manufacturing your lightweight car, motors and batteries
Such as? Go on, we're waiting.
PLUS using electrical current generated by coal burning plants
Still a win on emissions (except maybe for CO2) even if your claim were true. It's not really true, because less than half of the energy mix is coal, and, more to the point, practically zero is from oil.
Looks like the prosecutor and the courts agreed with you. He isn't being charged with the kid's death.
Yes, but he was, irrefutably, charged because of it. If Clementi hadn't taken his own life, the most likely outcome would have been nothing whatsoever.
This is why Thomas Jefferson and others fought hard for free public education--they knew democracy could never work in the absence of a well-educated society.
Another key problem (especially in the US) is the first-past-the-post voting system, which ensures a system dominated by two parties, and practically guarantees that, in any contested race, a majority of people preferred someone *other* than the winner.
Don't misunderstand me--I'm a strong EV proponent, I work in the industry, and I'm no fan of GM--but the EV "community" has repeated this half truth until it's become "fact". The dirty little secret about the EV-1 is that the variable cost to produce one was about $200,000 (and the fully amortized cost was over $1M/unit). EV-1 fanboys like to talk about how many people wanted to buy the (lease-only) cars, but if you put a fair price tag on it, a lot of hands go down.
Was the EV-1 a fun car to drive? Yep, sure was. Did it also have plenty of flaws that the EV "community" likes to gloss over? Affirmative.
It was a pretty stupid PR move for GM to crush the cars (particularly in retrospect) but I am entirely sympathetic to GM for not wanting to continue production on a huge money loser.
Nighttime EV chargers are connected to a residential distribution grid, implemented as overhead wires and transformers on poles.
No need to be Chicken Little about this. An EV is a 2-4 kW load when charging. On the order of an electric dryer or a pool pump. People add loads this size all the time, and utility companies deal with the incremental loads.
However power companies are interested in pushing EV users into the far more expensive day rates.
I'd ask for references to back up that assertion but I know you don't have them. The grid is already loaded more heavily during the day, and utility companies are highly motivated to use the existing grid as efficiently as possible. Adding new capacity (to handle mid-day peaks that only occur a few times per year) is enormously expensive.
Around here we have low nighttime rates that are favorable to EVs, and the utility (PG&E) strongly encourages their (optional) adoption if you regularly charge an EV.
IMO, the EV charger network needs to be built.
Spoken like a true armchair EV driver. Virtually all charging happens at home, where it's (by far) cheapest and most convenient.
I personally would be very uncomfortable on a freeway if I'm low on charge and there is an accident far ahead and nobody knows how soon it can be cleared.
Seriously? The car uses negligible energy when it's not moving.
As a Montana resident, I think it would cost a lot more than that to get good mass transit here.
Contrary to your implication, public transportation need not provide a 100% solution to be effective. As a Montana resident, you represent 0.3% of the US population, and are not a logical target for public transportation.
Those who say the US can use mass transit have never been here.
And those who say it cannot work have never been somewhere where it does.
You also can't use mass transit in farming communities.
Great argument, there. Public transportation is not a 100% solution, so we might as well abandon it, right? Rural, sparsely-populated areas are the least logical choices, but thankfully our population centers are concentrated on the coasts.
It's a shortcoming of LiIon technology that if the cell becomes over-discharged, the cell may fail short circuit
Yeah, it would be if it were true.
A deep discharge will increase cell impedance (which is the EOL/calendar life failure mode for Li cells anyway) but it would be an enormous stretch to call that "fail short".
Well technically towing an electric vehicle, missing a clutch, would make it a generator
No it would not, because the roadster uses an AC induction motor (with no magnets) so there is zero back EMF once excitation is removed.
The Leaf uses a brushless (synchronous) DC motor, but even in that case, the regen-while-towing scenario is only possible because the vehicle is powered on, which is not (by definition) possible when the battery is too deeply discharged.
Just what we need--more "analysts" fighting bad bloggers' bad information with more bad information.
Let's start with the "more than 8000 individual batteries". These are 18650 cells (a standard form factor, a bit larger than an AA cell), and a Roaster has only 6831 of them. They are not "individually managed". Rather, they are grouped into a 69-parallel module, with 99 modules in series. (69x99==6831)
It is asinine and a distraction that Tesla (and everyone else) constantly obsesses about the 6831 cells. For all practical purposes it is a 99-cell Li battery, but rather than using monolithic cell modules, Tesla (like ACP before them) builds modules from smaller component cells, because they yield better cost ($/Wh) and specific energy (Wh/kg), with more-favorable cooling and safety characteristics.
Other than a built-in per-cell PTC device (which Tesla is likely no longer using), any "management" is done at the module level, and the battery is treated as a 99-cell series pack. The PTC is a passive cell protection device, designed to save a cell from a failed-short condition, but they also cause as many problems as they prevent.
Secondly, the "solution" is not nearly as simple as "shutting the pack down" when it reaches "an extremely low depth of discharge".
The Li cells themselves do not discharge themselves quickly when idle--perhaps 5 or 10 percent per year. However, small parasitic (e.g. maintenance) loads will slowly deplete the cells' energy. Herein lies the "grain of truth" that is probably at the center of this greatly dramatized "journalism".
Li traction batteries typically have on the order of 100 cells (or more for 600V systems), and each cell must be monitored to keep its voltage and temperature within a safe range. Typically the monitors are powered from the cell modules directly, and the competing design constraints are many: Small packaging, low cost, low power, electrical isolation, and so on. It is possible, but not trivial (nor cheap) to make a cell monitor draw zero current when its host module is at low voltage.
The original rant (er, blog) claimed that the parasitics would deplete a battery in 11 weeks, which is bordering on implausible, and if true, it would represent a staggeringly high rate of self discharge. Per Chelsea Sexton (who knows what she's talking about), there has not been "a single 'brick' story that didn't involve some extraordinary circumstances".
Lastly is the notion that the traction pack is necessarily destroyed by a deep discharge event. While it is true that deep discharge (and particularly cell reversal) will cause some permanent damage, the damage is in the form of higher impedance, and this is far from rendering the module useless. The battery can be brought back via trickle charging and a per-module impedance test will reveal if any are too far gone.
So about 7.5 hours of useful energy, and a couple more hours of producing below 25% of capacity.
Sure, it *runs* more than 5-6 hours, but not at full nameplate capacity (unless you live very near the equator).
See this graph to get an idea of the annualized daily irradiation in the US (and divide the numbers by 24 hours to get a corresponding capacity factor).
The bigger problem, actually, is weather. Today I produced 21kWh. Yesterday, I produced 4.
That's only a problem if you're not connected to the power grid.
Well, your $3/watt and falling solar is useful on average 12 hours a day.
That's a common misconception--it's actually only about an average of 5 hours per day in an ideal location. Capacity factor for PV is rarely greater than about 0.2.
So since your solar only produces power 1/2 of the day
It's worse than that--the capacity factor for PV is closer to 20% than 50%. Even in ideal locations, there is only an average of 5 hours of full sun per day.
Before you comment, you should familiarize yourself with the difference between power (kW) and energy (kWh), less you spread more misinformation like the above.
It looks "pricey" because you're not accounting for the capacity factor. The nuke will run at its full nameplate capacity better than 90% of the time, but even in ideal locations, there is only about an annualized 5 hours of full sun per day, giving solar a best-case capacity factor of about 20%.
If you correct your math, you'll see that the nuke energy is less than half the cost of the solar.
I challenge the authors to post even a single source where modules are available for $1.00/watt, or even the $1.60/watt claimed "at the beginning of 2011". Those numbers are just not congruent with retail prices I see.
[...]I would think it would be easy to technically comply with the letter of the law by omitting just enough code that someone who knows enough about computer graphics can easily fill in the blanks.
He doesn't need to omit anything. He can ship the source code verbatim. It's not protected by anything. Like I said, anyone using the code may be infringing by doing so, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with publishing the code.
It sounds like Carmack is implementing a workaround to the Creative patent. That's very decent of him, but there's still nothing preventing release of the original (claimed infringing) source code. At worst, anyone who *used* the source would be infringing but publishing it would not be a problem (the patent is disclosed by definition, after all).
Seeing the original implementation side-by-side with the new workaround would be incredibly interesting, I think.
Slashdot Mirror
I told her as long as her current car was safe and dependable, don't go buy a new car to "save money".
Probably sound advice in most cases, but your analysis is assuming a trade-in value of $0.
Batteries have to be replaced every 5 years.
Buy whatever you want, but please stop spewing bullshit. Battery replacement is so infrequent (even in mild hybrids that have been around more than a decade) that there isn't even enough data to calculate a meaningful MTBF. Either you're trolling with the 5-year battery replacement line, or you've fallen for a troll.
I am *personally* driving a pure electric with a battery nearing its sixth birthday, and it is still almost as good as new.
All of the extra nasty non-green things that goes into manufacturing your lightweight car, motors and batteries
Such as? Go on, we're waiting.
PLUS using electrical current generated by coal burning plants
Still a win on emissions (except maybe for CO2) even if your claim were true. It's not really true, because less than half of the energy mix is coal, and, more to the point, practically zero is from oil.
Looks like the prosecutor and the courts agreed with you. He isn't being charged with the kid's death.
Yes, but he was, irrefutably, charged because of it. If Clementi hadn't taken his own life, the most likely outcome would have been nothing whatsoever.
This is why Thomas Jefferson and others fought hard for free public education--they knew democracy could never work in the absence of a well-educated society.
Another key problem (especially in the US) is the first-past-the-post voting system, which ensures a system dominated by two parties, and practically guarantees that, in any contested race, a majority of people preferred someone *other* than the winner.
GM [...] had a viable electric car 15 years ago.
Don't misunderstand me--I'm a strong EV proponent, I work in the industry, and I'm no fan of GM--but the EV "community" has repeated this half truth until it's become "fact". The dirty little secret about the EV-1 is that the variable cost to produce one was about $200,000 (and the fully amortized cost was over $1M/unit). EV-1 fanboys like to talk about how many people wanted to buy the (lease-only) cars, but if you put a fair price tag on it, a lot of hands go down.
Was the EV-1 a fun car to drive? Yep, sure was. Did it also have plenty of flaws that the EV "community" likes to gloss over? Affirmative.
It was a pretty stupid PR move for GM to crush the cars (particularly in retrospect) but I am entirely sympathetic to GM for not wanting to continue production on a huge money loser.
Nighttime EV chargers are connected to a residential distribution grid, implemented as overhead wires and transformers on poles.
No need to be Chicken Little about this. An EV is a 2-4 kW load when charging. On the order of an electric dryer or a pool pump. People add loads this size all the time, and utility companies deal with the incremental loads.
However power companies are interested in pushing EV users into the far more expensive day rates.
I'd ask for references to back up that assertion but I know you don't have them. The grid is already loaded more heavily during the day, and utility companies are highly motivated to use the existing grid as efficiently as possible. Adding new capacity (to handle mid-day peaks that only occur a few times per year) is enormously expensive.
Around here we have low nighttime rates that are favorable to EVs, and the utility (PG&E) strongly encourages their (optional) adoption if you regularly charge an EV.
IMO, the EV charger network needs to be built.
Spoken like a true armchair EV driver. Virtually all charging happens at home, where it's (by far) cheapest and most convenient.
I personally would be very uncomfortable on a freeway if I'm low on charge and there is an accident far ahead and nobody knows how soon it can be cleared.
Seriously? The car uses negligible energy when it's not moving.
So, the rest of us US taxpayers are subsidizing you to buy a car??
Shh, nobody tell him about how *all* cars are massively subsidized (along with their fuel) in the USA.
As a Montana resident, I think it would cost a lot more than that to get good mass transit here.
Contrary to your implication, public transportation need not provide a 100% solution to be effective. As a Montana resident, you represent 0.3% of the US population, and are not a logical target for public transportation.
Those who say the US can use mass transit have never been here.
And those who say it cannot work have never been somewhere where it does.
You also can't use mass transit in farming communities.
Great argument, there. Public transportation is not a 100% solution, so we might as well abandon it, right? Rural, sparsely-populated areas are the least logical choices, but thankfully our population centers are concentrated on the coasts.
There is no mention of that term anywhere in the article. How about posting headlines in plain English?
It's a shortcoming of LiIon technology that if the cell becomes over-discharged, the cell may fail short circuit
Yeah, it would be if it were true.
A deep discharge will increase cell impedance (which is the EOL/calendar life failure mode for Li cells anyway) but it would be an enormous stretch to call that "fail short".
Well technically towing an electric vehicle, missing a clutch, would make it a generator
No it would not, because the roadster uses an AC induction motor (with no magnets) so there is zero back EMF once excitation is removed.
The Leaf uses a brushless (synchronous) DC motor, but even in that case, the regen-while-towing scenario is only possible because the vehicle is powered on, which is not (by definition) possible when the battery is too deeply discharged.
Just what we need--more "analysts" fighting bad bloggers' bad information with more bad information.
Let's start with the "more than 8000 individual batteries". These are 18650 cells (a standard form factor, a bit larger than an AA cell), and a Roaster has only 6831 of them. They are not "individually managed". Rather, they are grouped into a 69-parallel module, with 99 modules in series. (69x99==6831)
It is asinine and a distraction that Tesla (and everyone else) constantly obsesses about the 6831 cells. For all practical purposes it is a 99-cell Li battery, but rather than using monolithic cell modules, Tesla (like ACP before them) builds modules from smaller component cells, because they yield better cost ($/Wh) and specific energy (Wh/kg), with more-favorable cooling and safety characteristics.
Other than a built-in per-cell PTC device (which Tesla is likely no longer using), any "management" is done at the module level, and the battery is treated as a 99-cell series pack. The PTC is a passive cell protection device, designed to save a cell from a failed-short condition, but they also cause as many problems as they prevent.
Secondly, the "solution" is not nearly as simple as "shutting the pack down" when it reaches "an extremely low depth of discharge".
The Li cells themselves do not discharge themselves quickly when idle--perhaps 5 or 10 percent per year. However, small parasitic (e.g. maintenance) loads will slowly deplete the cells' energy. Herein lies the "grain of truth" that is probably at the center of this greatly dramatized "journalism".
Li traction batteries typically have on the order of 100 cells (or more for 600V systems), and each cell must be monitored to keep its voltage and temperature within a safe range. Typically the monitors are powered from the cell modules directly, and the competing design constraints are many: Small packaging, low cost, low power, electrical isolation, and so on. It is possible, but not trivial (nor cheap) to make a cell monitor draw zero current when its host module is at low voltage.
The original rant (er, blog) claimed that the parasitics would deplete a battery in 11 weeks, which is bordering on implausible, and if true, it would represent a staggeringly high rate of self discharge. Per Chelsea Sexton (who knows what she's talking about), there has not been "a single 'brick' story that didn't involve some extraordinary circumstances".
Lastly is the notion that the traction pack is necessarily destroyed by a deep discharge event. While it is true that deep discharge (and particularly cell reversal) will cause some permanent damage, the damage is in the form of higher impedance, and this is far from rendering the module useless. The battery can be brought back via trickle charging and a per-module impedance test will reveal if any are too far gone.
Clearly the base of any good moral system is the rejection of sorcery, is that what you are saying?
No. Rather, the legal system should not acknowledge the existence of "sorcery" nor any other paranormal bullshit.
Unless you have a way to show that one moral system is better than another, you can't say one country's laws and preferences are better than another.
Since SA regularly executes people for "sorcery", I'm pretty sure I could identify a superior legal system or two.
So about 7.5 hours of useful energy, and a couple more hours of producing below 25% of capacity.
Sure, it *runs* more than 5-6 hours, but not at full nameplate capacity (unless you live very near the equator).
See this graph to get an idea of the annualized daily irradiation in the US (and divide the numbers by 24 hours to get a corresponding capacity factor).
The bigger problem, actually, is weather. Today I produced 21kWh. Yesterday, I produced 4.
That's only a problem if you're not connected to the power grid.
Well, your $3/watt and falling solar is useful on average 12 hours a day.
That's a common misconception--it's actually only about an average of 5 hours per day in an ideal location. Capacity factor for PV is rarely greater than about 0.2.
So since your solar only produces power 1/2 of the day
It's worse than that--the capacity factor for PV is closer to 20% than 50%. Even in ideal locations, there is only an average of 5 hours of full sun per day.
Before you comment, you should familiarize yourself with the difference between power (kW) and energy (kWh), less you spread more misinformation like the above.
Why so pricey?
It looks "pricey" because you're not accounting for the capacity factor. The nuke will run at its full nameplate capacity better than 90% of the time, but even in ideal locations, there is only about an annualized 5 hours of full sun per day, giving solar a best-case capacity factor of about 20%.
If you correct your math, you'll see that the nuke energy is less than half the cost of the solar.
plans to introduce a bill that would require a new health study
How about studying their efficacy while we're in there, since it seems to be dubious?
Agreed, except that your nuclear-powered car is already here today and it is called "electric rail".
I challenge the authors to post even a single source where modules are available for $1.00/watt, or even the $1.60/watt claimed "at the beginning of 2011". Those numbers are just not congruent with retail prices I see.
What's the big deal? If Iran wanted to fly its own drones over US airspace, I'm sure the US would be totally cool with it.
[...]I would think it would be easy to technically comply with the letter of the law by omitting just enough code that someone who knows enough about computer graphics can easily fill in the blanks.
He doesn't need to omit anything. He can ship the source code verbatim. It's not protected by anything. Like I said, anyone using the code may be infringing by doing so, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with publishing the code.
It sounds like Carmack is implementing a workaround to the Creative patent. That's very decent of him, but there's still nothing preventing release of the original (claimed infringing) source code. At worst, anyone who *used* the source would be infringing but publishing it would not be a problem (the patent is disclosed by definition, after all).
Seeing the original implementation side-by-side with the new workaround would be incredibly interesting, I think.