$4 / watt doesn't cover a off grid battery system that would last 20 years. So your not going to charge your car anywhere near the getting 100% of the output of the solar system unless it is connected to that grid all day, so now your only using your car at night? Currently you will need the plant to charge your car at night, then make up for it by day, or maintain 2 battery packs... likely not cheaper than gas if scaled at todays tech to even replace a 1/4 of the ICE cars today, luckily we don't have to replace at that rate currently.
You know how I know your not even reading my post before you disagree? You quote me then say no and repeat exactly word for word what I posted as the actual truth that proves me wrong. Pretty sure your just arguing with yourself now.
> enabling the engine to remain in its power band more often. Exactly, the better the transmission the better you can stay in the power band, the more fuel is saved by stabbing the throttle to climb the hill, then going back to cruise mode faster. >peak efficiency is at peak torque for almost all gasoline engines, which is usually at 80% of peak power. Regardless much higher than at cruise speed, reinforcing my original point regardless. > The automatic is simply more complex... Not true for automatics with torque converters, again the reason I point out manuals are simpler case, you cant use the clutch with the cruise control on, having the cruise, or driver floor it to get back up to speed doesn't waste fuel. >> KERS... Bringing more complexity into the question about something that doesn't exist in production cars reinforces why I say manual trans, it may not be the best, but it is simple math. Floor it to get back up to speed in a manual wont reduce fuel economy. Everything said still reinforces my original post, correct?
>Stop pretending like lockup torque converters don't exist. They do. And they don't equate to a manual, I am not saying Autos are significantly worse, I am just acknowledging the math isn't as simple with a auto. #1 at anywhere near full throttle lockups drop out, most don't have the capability to handle full torque without risk of damage to the transmission. #2 the biggest losses are from spinning and pumping the fluid around, the lockup doesn't change those losses one bit, your still spinning pumping and pushing the same fluids around at the same engine speed, and the losses are not linear with engine speed like a manual. Lockup more or less just gives the transmission another gear, a good thing, but doesn't make it anything like a manual. >Yes, but we're talking about acceleration, not cruising. Yes, exactly my point, we want to be in the most efficient operation for the engine while accelerating (full torque output), while cruising we want the lowest fuel burn. The quicker we get from accelerating back to cruising the more efficient we will be. > There's no way to know unless we know the vehicle. That was truly the only reason I brought up the manual, It's losses are truly linear with torque all are equal. With all the differences in autos, and hybrids, knowing the engine efficiency without knowing the transmission losses could change the equation.
While not pointed out in the article, it does seam to have some component of blame on the companies. They build the offices outside the city's where they get tax breaks, but the workers don't want to live near there, so they setup buses to where the workers do want to live. So the city can't get taxes direct from the companies, the workers don't eat... in the city most of the time as they are a hour away. The only way for the city to get money is from things like property taxes that will hit the long term residents as much or more. Also the private buses don't help the locals as much. All small things that are not wrong. But it sure would be nice if your going to have mass transit causing more people in the city you live, for that mass transit to be available to everyone. For the most part I agree with your assessment, but it is human nature when they see neighbors getting better treatment (much nicer busses straight to work) and they are driving up your costs as well, to be mad.
It does mention Ford expects this to do the most on Trucks, and crossovers. Pull a trailer, or load up 5k in additional load, along with more wind resistance would make the most difficult to pre compute. Personally since the cruise control has the capability of overriding my throttle pedal, and is the most safety critical software item after ABS, so please don't add any non hardened inputs, like orientations, grade sensors, navigation system data just so someone doesn't have a extra downshift now and then.
>bad for fuel economy to let the cruise control slam on the gas to keep the speed up that is/was true for cars with carburetors, fuel injected gasoline engines are going to be most efficient with least intake restriction at near peak torque engine speeds. (throttle pedal just varies intake restriction, less throttle more restriction, the ECU then determines fuel from the resulting air flow.) Automatic transmissions will get less efficient the higher the engine speed, and higher the torque, that could make it slightly worse efficiency to slam on the gas for a short period of time, instead of increased throttle for longer durations, but doubtful, or slightly. Of course at the same speed you will burn more fuel at more throttle, but if you were to go from 10% throttle to 80% throttle for 10 seconds to maintain your speed up the hill, then back to 10% versus going to 20% throttle for 30 seconds It will likely save total fuel to gas it for the shorter duration (definitely true in a manual transmission car.)
Good information, thanks. This does seam like a real concern that would be nice for Musk to have taken on more as another challenge to electric car adoption that he could be producing a solution to. Rather than a "not a problem with our cars so STFU." or at least that is how I read the Tesla response. The typical Tesla luxury car purchaser probably can (and would) just pay up for a high dollar J1772 EV station. But this car owner likely had a existing outlet not in his direct control to update, so used that. But if Elon is truly planning to push electric cars out to us unwashed masses we may need a little more detection of a high impedance point, and more dummy proof adapters, that would distinguish things like a 50 amp RV connection, with the power to start a AC, but maybe we shouldn't trust a string of adapters connected to that to provide the highest charge rate, even if the circuit should be capable. Or at least not for a indoor garage I am walking away for the night charge occurring.
As a former electrician, I am not sure your argument makes much sense, the same rules you seam to condone aluminum with are true for copper as well. All the wire to my house, and garage, both are new, are all Aluminum, 200Amp service to the house, 150Amp to the garage. Of course it is of correct gauge, of course the high amperage connections are not wire nuts, that is no different for copper high amperage. About the only thing that sucks for Al is that you cant have wire nut, twist together connections, that is only allowed for copper in lower than 20 amp connections, so yeah don't use AL for wiring a string of 20amp outlets. Al or CU has nothing to do with why a 50 amp connection would have issues, using CU or AL you need to use 6G wire or better, you need to screw lug, absolutely no reason to differentiate the 2, the specs are nearly identical for NEC at amperage above 20Amp for both. So your right, no one uses AL for 20 amp, but that has no bearing that single point to single point connection. Your electrician may not trust AL wiring, but it is either irrational or he is just misinformed. My grandpa was the same way, because when copper got really expensive, idiots did wrongly wire things like they used to get away with on copper. Just because it can be done wrong, doesn't make it unsafe for all uses.
It may seam harsh, but the rate for those not involved in illegal activity pails in comparison to other causes of death to worry about in the US. IE a ban on guns would greatly affect me, and,ost people I know in our regular lives (own guns, and hunt for several weeks yearly, target practice monthly). The closest gun violence has come to me, was a person I met once, his wife killed his girlfriend with a gun (neither did I ever meet) 15 years ago. Suicide and mental illness has affected me, I know 3 people who killed themselves last year (err excuse me, majority of suicides are by gun, I mean they accidentally overdosed on prescription meds) So in my experience saying you should ban guns because of a few deaths, seams like a bigger deal than say banning all prescription drugs or personal cars due to deaths, they have caused many more injuries and deaths than guns (especially to those I know) and thus while the impact of no car would be a order of magnitude worse, the reduced negative impact is infinitely worse to me.
I guess it wasn't traction controll, but stabilty controll that causes me problems. The switch only says traction. The problem is if I try to maintain speed through a hole, it sees the rear end slide... and reduces throttle and pulls on the brake to go straight, more important to maintain speed than be perfectly straight but stuck in the mud usualy.
>. the only reason there's a button to turn off your traction control is
Not true, every car has times it needs to be off. Drive you car home on a spare without burning up brakes. Not to mention most suck at things like going through mud holes, deep snow. Even the really good factory systems when turned off allow pro drivers to go faster. I understand a race system in a race environment is a winner, but has nothing to do with need to disable the production systems in intense driving (but not while commuting.)
He does seam to be crossing the line, but as you say it is in a way that is possibly true. He keeps calling it the worlds safest car, and as proof uses a impressive crash test results but that is a small part of safety. Then immediatly compares burning a car to the ground fire in a new car to stats that include fires that mostly went out on there own in 15 year old cars (ie 5x fewer but smaller fires than the least safe cars on the road is still the safest car on the plannet? Also he keeps using $.05 / kwhr as a realistic cost for residential customer cost, and then using california costs for fuel as a comparison.
>but I don't for a moment believe he's ever going to produce a car that the so-called 47% can actually afford.
At this point it would be financhial suicide for Tesla to try, you have Chevy and Nissan in that market. To dilute the brand and compete with companies with flexible mass production lines (volt fails to sell, in a month the line will produce the car that is selling). And dealer networks...
None of those compare to the Tesla incidents in severity, mostly something flammable caught fire while being drug, causing little car damage in the end, and all fires going out with little or no help. But I get the point, out of 25 million cars, you will definitely find many worse than the Tesla incident we saw (but most are not worse). The question is really going to be what is the anomaly? If running over a 5 pound hunk of metal has a high probability of burning the Tesla to the ground, then it isn't going to end well for Tesla. If 20k Tesla cars having 2 cars burn in 3 months for running over debris, scales when they have 200k cars on the road and equals 80 cars a year burning... Or will Elan be right, and it is closer to 2 cars per year being at the high end of the spectrum, then they safety will be better than most conventional cars. Similar with the claims that the firewall is impenetrable, regular cars also have firewalls that are rarely breached by fire. That 2 Tesla cars burned without penetrating the passenger compartment isn't proof it will never happen, only that the odds are better than 50:50. Basically having a concern based on the track record of Lithium battery fires, after the recall on the Chevy volt Lithium batteries for similar problems, and the well known issues with the use in phones... is very logical
> I think hitting a steel tow hitch at 70MPH is more than a little bump I think 99% of standard cars out there would drive over the debris that killed the 2 tesla's without any notice (The 100MPH collision with a concrete wall was a awesome outcome for the Tesla, the other 2 fires were not.) The odds of hitting something stationary the size of a tow hitch (and nothing else), and getting a fire in a conventional car would be very unlikely, basically it would have to hit a fuel line that sprayed on the exhaust, then the driver would have to ignore and leave the car running to keep the fire going to have anything similar to the scale of the Tesla accident to happen. Don't get me wrong, likely 99% of accidents the Tesla will handle equal to or better than a normal car, but this isn't one of them. Some of that is likely due to the goal of supercar handling goals at triple digit speeds (IE the suspension lowering the car at speed...) But it is much worse than the majority of cars at running of debris, and likely slightly worse than the majority of super cars at the same.
Good post, one correction: > gas-powered cars; they only can run on oil products by definition. Most new cars are E85 compatible, which can be made from any substance that rum can be made from. Corn, srawberries, bananas, potatoes. It does take a heat source to distill... diesiel is even easier with peanut oil...
> we need to figure out why people give proportionally less
I think Bill is trying to answer why he didn't give when he was building wealth. If you recall Bill was a very small giver at that time, his answer was that he was going to give to charity, but he said it was better that he invest the money, because he could do better building a larger fortune to do more good, than the small quantity he could do then. At the time most rolled their eyes at this excuse, but then he followed through.
My guess is Bill had reasons such as:
1) Lack of well managed worthy causes that make a difference. Everyone begs for money from him with a good story, but finding which one takes more effort than he wants to take from day to day work.
2) Lack of time to manage giving. Again, he was focused on building something early, without #1 he had to basically retire to do this one right.
So I think Bill is looking at why he didn't give, and trying to address that first. Personally these reasons hold me back. While not that rich, so why would I give to the Susan Kolmans of the world, so that she can live better than me but do good with the leftovers. I would rather give to someone like Gates, but I am more selfish, wanting to see results in person (IE locally) if I am sacrificing on my quality of living for them.
> static electricity spark have been able to ignite the fuel tank simply when using a self-service pump at a gasoline station. I don't think so, it doesn't light the tank, and it is one of the 1 in a 1000 when it does ignite at all. IE during fueling it is pushing the flammable gas vapor out of the tanks open cap, that is light-able outside the tank but it almost always just goes out, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohRAM4_NQg because the fuel vapor is going to push all the oxygen out of the tank, it just isn't a conducive environment for a fire. Only if you get another fuel source bringing the fuel tank to a boil will it explode (IE the only exciting you tube videos that I could find of this involved either fueling a external can, or the nozzle held on.) Heck when I was kid I shot bottle rockets, fire crackers, etc into a junked cars fuel cap with 1/3 tank, a little vapor fire in the nozzle was the result of a bottle rocket exploding inside a fuel tank.
But gas tanks don't seam to need the same protection. When myth busters used a rifle to shot round after round into a cars gas tank, they couldn't get it to light. Only hitting the gas on the ground with a tracer lighting the fumes would it light. Basically a single vehicle accident that punctures a fuel tank will not start a fire, maybe 1 in a 1000. Only when you have gas on the ground, and car batteries sparks, or sparks from metal do you get a crash fire (petro cars having small electric fires or oil fires are more common, but usually limited damage that a single fire extinguisher will put out.) If the tesla is more prone to flame up (not proven) adding fuel from another vehicle will be all the more scary. That the Tesla takes so much effort to put out a fire, and burns for so long is the reason for extra concern IMHO. What happens when one ends up in a multiple car pile up, where they can't soak the batteries while saving those trapped in the pile-up? Also the problem that it, as a exotic performance car, has very little ground clearance making smaller objects, that wouldn't be touched by 90% of cars on the road, to nearly total the car. But that is likely a concern for all exotic performance cars, not just the Tesla.
Epa has a article on the site, it says you need heat, time, turbulence, air. At 1100 to 1500 f range with sufficient oxygen, for 3 seconds you should get only co2 and water. Or a secondary burn, that re lights the escaping smoke. http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/workshop2011/WoodCombustion-Curkeet.pdf
Correct, and the question is what level of protection is needed for each and what level was provided. current Lithium-ion batteries are a self contained power producer, no separation of fuel and engine, short it out and all of the energy in that battery is going to be released unless you can break it apart, it is likely to release all of it's power.
Diesel for example has a advantage, because it is very difficult to get it to release it's power at atmospheric conditions. Gasoline is even less prone in the liquid form, so the likely hood of starting a file inside it's fuel tank is fairly slight (hence myth-busters repeatedly shot gasoline tanks without fire, with only shooting tracers at the gasoline on the ground finally lighting the vapor.) But even then the energy released (due to incomplete burn) is a fraction of the energy you are carrying. Also most of the car fires are not even in the fuel tank, more of the fires are electrical, or after the fuel pump. Hence the new gas/diesel cars are very fire safe, with safety's to shutdown the fuel pump... in a accident. I see no reasons a electric car is inherently less fire safe, but these incidents, despite no injuries, do still raise concerns that maybe Tesla missed something, without decades of incremental safety improvements, maybe the car isn't actually the safest car on the planet like Elon claims.
It is a given, occasionally people will still get hurt, and they will still be compensated for the cause of there grief. I would expect the first autonomous supplier will require insurance be bought by the operators to cover them in the case of a accident. As the rate of accidents goes down because of autonomy, the price of insurance will be cheaper for the Autonomous cars, making the path profitable. Even if it does injure or kill a person occasionally costing the insurers millions, they should be able to recoup some of the hundreds of millions due to overall lower cost of insurance.
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$4 / watt doesn't cover a off grid battery system that would last 20 years. So your not going to charge your car anywhere near the getting 100% of the output of the solar system unless it is connected to that grid all day, so now your only using your car at night? Currently you will need the plant to charge your car at night, then make up for it by day, or maintain 2 battery packs... likely not cheaper than gas if scaled at todays tech to even replace a 1/4 of the ICE cars today, luckily we don't have to replace at that rate currently.
You know how I know your not even reading my post before you disagree? You quote me then say no and repeat exactly word for word what I posted as the actual truth that proves me wrong. Pretty sure your just arguing with yourself now.
> enabling the engine to remain in its power band more often.
Exactly, the better the transmission the better you can stay in the power band, the more fuel is saved by stabbing the throttle to climb the hill, then going back to cruise mode faster.
>peak efficiency is
at peak torque for almost all gasoline engines, which is usually at 80% of peak power. Regardless much higher than at cruise speed, reinforcing my original point regardless.
> The automatic is simply more complex...
Not true for automatics with torque converters, again the reason I point out manuals are simpler case, you cant use the clutch with the cruise control on, having the cruise, or driver floor it to get back up to speed doesn't waste fuel.
>> KERS... Bringing more complexity into the question about something that doesn't exist in production cars reinforces why I say manual trans, it may not be the best, but it is simple math. Floor it to get back up to speed in a manual wont reduce fuel economy.
Everything said still reinforces my original post, correct?
>Stop pretending like lockup torque converters don't exist. They do. And they don't equate to a manual, I am not saying Autos are significantly worse, I am just acknowledging the math isn't as simple with a auto.
#1 at anywhere near full throttle lockups drop out, most don't have the capability to handle full torque without risk of damage to the transmission.
#2 the biggest losses are from spinning and pumping the fluid around, the lockup doesn't change those losses one bit, your still spinning pumping and pushing the same fluids around at the same engine speed, and the losses are not linear with engine speed like a manual. Lockup more or less just gives the transmission another gear, a good thing, but doesn't make it anything like a manual.
>Yes, but we're talking about acceleration, not cruising.
Yes, exactly my point, we want to be in the most efficient operation for the engine while accelerating (full torque output), while cruising we want the lowest fuel burn. The quicker we get from accelerating back to cruising the more efficient we will be.
> There's no way to know unless we know the vehicle.
That was truly the only reason I brought up the manual, It's losses are truly linear with torque all are equal. With all the differences in autos, and hybrids, knowing the engine efficiency without knowing the transmission losses could change the equation.
While not pointed out in the article, it does seam to have some component of blame on the companies. They build the offices outside the city's where they get tax breaks, but the workers don't want to live near there, so they setup buses to where the workers do want to live. So the city can't get taxes direct from the companies, the workers don't eat... in the city most of the time as they are a hour away. The only way for the city to get money is from things like property taxes that will hit the long term residents as much or more. Also the private buses don't help the locals as much. All small things that are not wrong. But it sure would be nice if your going to have mass transit causing more people in the city you live, for that mass transit to be available to everyone.
For the most part I agree with your assessment, but it is human nature when they see neighbors getting better treatment (much nicer busses straight to work) and they are driving up your costs as well, to be mad.
It does mention Ford expects this to do the most on Trucks, and crossovers. Pull a trailer, or load up 5k in additional load, along with more wind resistance would make the most difficult to pre compute.
Personally since the cruise control has the capability of overriding my throttle pedal, and is the most safety critical software item after ABS, so please don't add any non hardened inputs, like orientations, grade sensors, navigation system data just so someone doesn't have a extra downshift now and then.
>bad for fuel economy to let the cruise control slam on the gas to keep the speed up
that is/was true for cars with carburetors, fuel injected gasoline engines are going to be most efficient with least intake restriction at near peak torque engine speeds. (throttle pedal just varies intake restriction, less throttle more restriction, the ECU then determines fuel from the resulting air flow.) Automatic transmissions will get less efficient the higher the engine speed, and higher the torque, that could make it slightly worse efficiency to slam on the gas for a short period of time, instead of increased throttle for longer durations, but doubtful, or slightly. Of course at the same speed you will burn more fuel at more throttle, but if you were to go from 10% throttle to 80% throttle for 10 seconds to maintain your speed up the hill, then back to 10% versus going to 20% throttle for 30 seconds It will likely save total fuel to gas it for the shorter duration (definitely true in a manual transmission car.)
Good information, thanks.
This does seam like a real concern that would be nice for Musk to have taken on more as another challenge to electric car adoption that he could be producing a solution to. Rather than a "not a problem with our cars so STFU." or at least that is how I read the Tesla response. The typical Tesla luxury car purchaser probably can (and would) just pay up for a high dollar J1772 EV station. But this car owner likely had a existing outlet not in his direct control to update, so used that. But if Elon is truly planning to push electric cars out to us unwashed masses we may need a little more detection of a high impedance point, and more dummy proof adapters, that would distinguish things like a 50 amp RV connection, with the power to start a AC, but maybe we shouldn't trust a string of adapters connected to that to provide the highest charge rate, even if the circuit should be capable. Or at least not for a indoor garage I am walking away for the night charge occurring.
As a former electrician, I am not sure your argument makes much sense, the same rules you seam to condone aluminum with are true for copper as well. All the wire to my house, and garage, both are new, are all Aluminum, 200Amp service to the house, 150Amp to the garage. Of course it is of correct gauge, of course the high amperage connections are not wire nuts, that is no different for copper high amperage. About the only thing that sucks for Al is that you cant have wire nut, twist together connections, that is only allowed for copper in lower than 20 amp connections, so yeah don't use AL for wiring a string of 20amp outlets. Al or CU has nothing to do with why a 50 amp connection would have issues, using CU or AL you need to use 6G wire or better, you need to screw lug, absolutely no reason to differentiate the 2, the specs are nearly identical for NEC at amperage above 20Amp for both. So your right, no one uses AL for 20 amp, but that has no bearing that single point to single point connection. Your electrician may not trust AL wiring, but it is either irrational or he is just misinformed. My grandpa was the same way, because when copper got really expensive, idiots did wrongly wire things like they used to get away with on copper. Just because it can be done wrong, doesn't make it unsafe for all uses.
It may seam harsh, but the rate for those not involved in illegal activity pails in comparison to other causes of death to worry about in the US. IE a ban on guns would greatly affect me, and ,ost people I know in our regular lives (own guns, and hunt for several weeks yearly, target practice monthly). The closest gun violence has come to me, was a person I met once, his wife killed his girlfriend with a gun (neither did I ever meet) 15 years ago. Suicide and mental illness has affected me, I know 3 people who killed themselves last year (err excuse me, majority of suicides are by gun, I mean they accidentally overdosed on prescription meds)
So in my experience saying you should ban guns because of a few deaths, seams like a bigger deal than say banning all prescription drugs or personal cars due to deaths, they have caused many more injuries and deaths than guns (especially to those I know) and thus while the impact of no car would be a order of magnitude worse, the reduced negative impact is infinitely worse to me.
I guess it wasn't traction controll, but stabilty controll that causes me problems. The switch only says traction. The problem is if I try to maintain speed through a hole, it sees the rear end slide... and reduces throttle and pulls on the brake to go straight, more important to maintain speed than be perfectly straight but stuck in the mud usualy.
>. the only reason there's a button to turn off your traction control is
Not true, every car has times it needs to be off. Drive you car home on a spare without burning up brakes. Not to mention most suck at things like going through mud holes, deep snow. Even the really good factory systems when turned off allow pro drivers to go faster. I understand a race system in a race environment is a winner, but has nothing to do with need to disable the production systems in intense driving (but not while commuting.)
He does seam to be crossing the line, but as you say it is in a way that is possibly true. He keeps calling it the worlds safest car, and as proof uses a impressive crash test results but that is a small part of safety. Then immediatly compares burning a car to the ground fire in a new car to stats that include fires that mostly went out on there own in 15 year old cars (ie 5x fewer but smaller fires than the least safe cars on the road is still the safest car on the plannet? Also he keeps using $.05 / kwhr as a realistic cost for residential customer cost, and then using california costs for fuel as a comparison.
>but I don't for a moment believe he's ever going to produce a car that the so-called 47% can actually afford.
At this point it would be financhial suicide for Tesla to try, you have Chevy and Nissan in that market. To dilute the brand and compete with companies with flexible mass production lines (volt fails to sell, in a month the line will produce the car that is selling). And dealer networks...
None of those compare to the Tesla incidents in severity, mostly something flammable caught fire while being drug, causing little car damage in the end, and all fires going out with little or no help. But I get the point, out of 25 million cars, you will definitely find many worse than the Tesla incident we saw (but most are not worse). The question is really going to be what is the anomaly? If running over a 5 pound hunk of metal has a high probability of burning the Tesla to the ground, then it isn't going to end well for Tesla. If 20k Tesla cars having 2 cars burn in 3 months for running over debris, scales when they have 200k cars on the road and equals 80 cars a year burning... Or will Elan be right, and it is closer to 2 cars per year being at the high end of the spectrum, then they safety will be better than most conventional cars.
Similar with the claims that the firewall is impenetrable, regular cars also have firewalls that are rarely breached by fire. That 2 Tesla cars burned without penetrating the passenger compartment isn't proof it will never happen, only that the odds are better than 50:50.
Basically having a concern based on the track record of Lithium battery fires, after the recall on the Chevy volt Lithium batteries for similar problems, and the well known issues with the use in phones... is very logical
> I think hitting a steel tow hitch at 70MPH is more than a little bump
I think 99% of standard cars out there would drive over the debris that killed the 2 tesla's without any notice (The 100MPH collision with a concrete wall was a awesome outcome for the Tesla, the other 2 fires were not.) The odds of hitting something stationary the size of a tow hitch (and nothing else), and getting a fire in a conventional car would be very unlikely, basically it would have to hit a fuel line that sprayed on the exhaust, then the driver would have to ignore and leave the car running to keep the fire going to have anything similar to the scale of the Tesla accident to happen. Don't get me wrong, likely 99% of accidents the Tesla will handle equal to or better than a normal car, but this isn't one of them. Some of that is likely due to the goal of supercar handling goals at triple digit speeds (IE the suspension lowering the car at speed...) But it is much worse than the majority of cars at running of debris, and likely slightly worse than the majority of super cars at the same.
Good post, one correction: > gas-powered cars; they only can run on oil products by definition.
Most new cars are E85 compatible, which can be made from any substance that rum can be made from. Corn, srawberries, bananas, potatoes. It does take a heat source to distill... diesiel is even easier with peanut oil...
Not conclusive, but Nasa says:We estimate over 600 million cubic meters (1 cubic meter = 1 metric ton) of water in these features
> we need to figure out why people give proportionally less
I think Bill is trying to answer why he didn't give when he was building wealth. If you recall Bill was a very small giver at that time, his answer was that he was going to give to charity, but he said it was better that he invest the money, because he could do better building a larger fortune to do more good, than the small quantity he could do then. At the time most rolled their eyes at this excuse, but then he followed through.
My guess is Bill had reasons such as:
1) Lack of well managed worthy causes that make a difference. Everyone begs for money from him with a good story, but finding which one takes more effort than he wants to take from day to day work.
2) Lack of time to manage giving. Again, he was focused on building something early, without #1 he had to basically retire to do this one right.
So I think Bill is looking at why he didn't give, and trying to address that first. Personally these reasons hold me back. While not that rich, so why would I give to the Susan Kolmans of the world, so that she can live better than me but do good with the leftovers. I would rather give to someone like Gates, but I am more selfish, wanting to see results in person (IE locally) if I am sacrificing on my quality of living for them.
> static electricity spark have been able to ignite the fuel tank simply when using a self-service pump at a gasoline station.
I don't think so, it doesn't light the tank, and it is one of the 1 in a 1000 when it does ignite at all. IE during fueling it is pushing the flammable gas vapor out of the tanks open cap, that is light-able outside the tank but it almost always just goes out, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohRAM4_NQg
because the fuel vapor is going to push all the oxygen out of the tank, it just isn't a conducive environment for a fire. Only if you get another fuel source bringing the fuel tank to a boil will it explode (IE the only exciting you tube videos that I could find of this involved either fueling a external can, or the nozzle held on.) Heck when I was kid I shot bottle rockets, fire crackers, etc into a junked cars fuel cap with 1/3 tank, a little vapor fire in the nozzle was the result of a bottle rocket exploding inside a fuel tank.
But gas tanks don't seam to need the same protection. When myth busters used a rifle to shot round after round into a cars gas tank, they couldn't get it to light. Only hitting the gas on the ground with a tracer lighting the fumes would it light. Basically a single vehicle accident that punctures a fuel tank will not start a fire, maybe 1 in a 1000. Only when you have gas on the ground, and car batteries sparks, or sparks from metal do you get a crash fire (petro cars having small electric fires or oil fires are more common, but usually limited damage that a single fire extinguisher will put out.) If the tesla is more prone to flame up (not proven) adding fuel from another vehicle will be all the more scary. That the Tesla takes so much effort to put out a fire, and burns for so long is the reason for extra concern IMHO. What happens when one ends up in a multiple car pile up, where they can't soak the batteries while saving those trapped in the pile-up?
Also the problem that it, as a exotic performance car, has very little ground clearance making smaller objects, that wouldn't be touched by 90% of cars on the road, to nearly total the car. But that is likely a concern for all exotic performance cars, not just the Tesla.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)
Epa has a article on the site, it says you need heat, time, turbulence, air. At 1100 to 1500 f range with sufficient oxygen, for 3 seconds you should get only co2 and water. Or a secondary burn, that re lights the escaping smoke. http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/workshop2011/WoodCombustion-Curkeet.pdf
Correct, and the question is what level of protection is needed for each and what level was provided.
current Lithium-ion batteries are a self contained power producer, no separation of fuel and engine, short it out and all of the energy in that battery is going to be released unless you can break it apart, it is likely to release all of it's power.
Diesel for example has a advantage, because it is very difficult to get it to release it's power at atmospheric conditions. Gasoline is even less prone in the liquid form, so the likely hood of starting a file inside it's fuel tank is fairly slight (hence myth-busters repeatedly shot gasoline tanks without fire, with only shooting tracers at the gasoline on the ground finally lighting the vapor.) But even then the energy released (due to incomplete burn) is a fraction of the energy you are carrying. Also most of the car fires are not even in the fuel tank, more of the fires are electrical, or after the fuel pump. Hence the new gas/diesel cars are very fire safe, with safety's to shutdown the fuel pump... in a accident.
I see no reasons a electric car is inherently less fire safe, but these incidents, despite no injuries, do still raise concerns that maybe Tesla missed something, without decades of incremental safety improvements, maybe the car isn't actually the safest car on the planet like Elon claims.
It is a given, occasionally people will still get hurt, and they will still be compensated for the cause of there grief. I would expect the first autonomous supplier will require insurance be bought by the operators to cover them in the case of a accident. As the rate of accidents goes down because of autonomy, the price of insurance will be cheaper for the Autonomous cars, making the path profitable. Even if it does injure or kill a person occasionally costing the insurers millions, they should be able to recoup some of the hundreds of millions due to overall lower cost of insurance.