The Bolt's looking more and more like another compliance car. Notice they minimized any capital investment, outsourcing the drivetrain to LG and building it on the same line as the Sonic. They are only offering it in CARB states and at negative margins of 9k, which happen to coincide with the available ZEV credits. https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
I think it's clear by now that Tesla is 100% committed to the success of the EV. If the ZEV requirements were dropped tomorrow, GM would ax the Bolt without hesitation. As the old saying goes, vote with your wallet.
Oh, and I don't live in a CARB state, so no Bolt for me.
I suspect Africans will skip coal just like they skipped land lines for cell phones.
For electricity, African's don't have the demand we have. They need to charge their cell phones and run lights. Currently they travel hours just to charge their phone and use candles for light. As for heating, wood works well in many places and is much easier to gather than mining coal. These guys http://www.azuri-technologies.... have a pretty decent effort for solar electric in Africa.
See the lines "Revenues" and "Cost of Revenues", where the former is greater than the latter. That's profit. Something tells me game developers don't require billions of dollars in capital expenses for manufacturing facilities, service centers, etc. Geese, why do I bother. You're probably just trolling.
"never individually bought a car that cost more than $15k" You must be buying used or just buying the absolute cheapest new cars on the market. Don't compare used cars to new cars. You're absolutely right about the depreciation. The smartest thing to do financially is buy a 3 year old car with low miles. It's nearly 50% cheaper, but still practically new.
Now that that's out of the way, let's talk apples and apples. Looking forward to the Model 3, assuming a $35k MSRP, the 5 year TCO should be lower than a $35k BMW or something else in that price range. Why? $1,000 or more saved on gasoline per year. That's at least $5k over 5 years. If gas were to go back up to $3 - $4 per gallon, that would be up to $10k in savings. Reduced maintenance. No oil changes and air filter changes. While these aren't terribly expensive ($200-$300 per year), they're a nuisance. I value not having to carve out slots of time for oil changes.
Early adopter. Being an early adopter is never the financially prudent move. But when you buy your $10 DVD player from Wal-Mart, you should be thankful for the early adopters who shelled out $1,500 for the first DVD players because they made your cheap DVD player possible. Same with EVs. in 2010, battery costs were $1000 / kwh. Today, 6 years later they're under $200 / kwh and more advanced to boot. They're projected to fall under $100 / kwh in short time. This is thanks in large to the high volume producers/consumers of the "expensive" EVs.
There's nothing wrong with being financially prudent, but don't think just because your financial math doesn't work for you today, the math is "bleak" for EVs. And when you're buying your $15k used Model 3 in the future, remember to be thankful to the Model S/X and early Model 3 owners who made it a reality.
"After going through all of his comments from this past weekend, it seems that Trump definitely wants a database of Syrian refugees, and he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a database for all Muslims -- though he isn’t actively calling for the latter. And we’ll warn you now that many of Trump’s comments strike us as contradictory or confusing."
The last line pretty much sums up Trump's "stances" - contradictory or confusing.
There's no way you can know Musk's history and NOT come to the same conclusion as the BasilBrush. The story of SpaceX's beginning is insane, consisting of Russians, rockets, bags of money, and balls of steel. Your easy dismissal reeks of ignorance. I'll get off your lawn now.
It would be OK if we were just arguing about different solutions to AGW, which is what you're doing. The biggest problem though, is the denialists argue that we don't have a problem. Actually, they'll take any stance as long at the outcome is - do nothing. You sound like a perfectly rational person, which seem to be in short supply.
Wow. Maximum Pessimism. The ability to travel long distances with an EV is practically here. Fast Charge DC and 200+ mile affordable (average price) EVs coming this year and the next and only increasing and growing cheaper afterwards. Please have a look and plugshare or Tesla's supercharger map. How well do you think gas cars would work without gas stations?
As for "Lithium is inadequate", do some research before stating something so false. Lithium-air, for instance, has a higher theoretical gravimetric energy density than gasoline, given that most of gasoline's energy is wasted as heat. The energy is combustion is not just from the gasoline. It also uses oxygen from the air. Today's lithium-ion batteries used are just adequate, but the potential exceeds that of petroleum. "Batteries are expensive" is so terribly short-sighted. The costs of plunged and are forcasts to continue under $100/kWh. And that's without any advancements. A short look at battery history shows we've come a long way in technology and costs and the EV revolution is driving R&D, which is key.
"AGW is not some immediate problem that needs to be solved tomorrow. It will unfold over decades, and the solution will also take decades."
The consequences will unfold over decades, but the problem is certainly immediate and it should have been "solved"/mitigated 15 years ago. I agree nearly 100% with your proposals as to how to address it. Anyone who thinks to world will revert to Amish style living tomorrow is just naive. The biggest problem we have is ignorance mostly due to the intentional spread of misinformation, the "Merchants of Doubt". We won't agree on how to solve the problem, but it's ridiculous that people still believe there isn't one.
We sampled 5000 12-second clips from our catalog, covering a wide range of genres and signal characteristics. With 3 codecs, 2 configurations, 3 resolutions (480p, 720p and 1080p) and 8 quality levels per configuration-resolution pair
and then
x265 and libvpx demonstrate superior compression performance compared to x264, with bitrate savings reaching up to 50% especially at the higher resolutions. x265 outperforms libvpx for almost all resolutions and quality metrics, but the performance gap narrows (or even reverses) at 1080p.
So the highest resolution they tested was 1080p and performance between the 2 codecs was very close with libvpx beating out x265 in some cases. As far as bandwidth goes, saving at 1080p and above is more valuable than saving at 480p. Practically everything we watch at home is streamed 1080p. I don't see that x265 is the winner here. And where are the 4k tests?
They're also very old and only interested in profit today. They have no interest in anything that requires real investment. Every serious energy projection shows renewables including wind and solar beating out coal and grid storage coming online. But the fact is, these old farts won't be around for another decade and could care less.
It's all relative, right. My Jeep Grand Cherokee Diesel can do nearly 700 miles on a tank. Should someone with a Civic have range anxiety because they can only do 350 miles? No, because even on longer trips, most of us stop every 2-3 hours even if we don't need fuel because we're not masochists.
Honda Civic starts at $18k. I bought a 2001 new for $14k, so you must be older than me to think they go for $12k;-) Average price for a new car is $32k, so that's the mainstream target.
For those that can, charging at home is soooooooo much better than stopping and filling at the gas station. That's my experience. For apartments and condos, even a few cheap 110V outlets is a good start and would be sufficient for day to day charging.
There is a huge opportunity being overlooked here though. How many businesses would jump at the chance to have a customer for 30-60 minutes. I've already seen shopping centers with Level 2 chargers. I think as more EVs hit the road we'll see a charging infrastructure in restaurants, grocery stores, movie theatres, malls, and so on. Chargers pretty much everywhere.
All I (and I suspect most rational people) want is for deniers to quit acting like it's all a hoax or that there's this huge uncertainty. You don't need to lift a finger since science and engineering is obviously not your field ("The science" is actually a mass of utterly impenetrable papers - tens of thousands of them, all refering to each other, and usually without complete data sets. Almost no one can read and understand them all.").
It's not like we're trying to control the climate (a statement I frequently hear from deniers). We're already manipulating the climate because we're changing the atmospheric composition with emissions. The goal is to STOP changing the atmosphere and therefore STOP affecting the climate.
"the only thing they are interested in is reducing the rest of humanity to a standard of living last seen before electricity became a thing"
Bull shit. I heard Rush Limbaugh say the same thing today. Just as we used to burn wood, and moved on after we saw the forests were becoming depleted, it's time to move on again. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Can you post a link to this study please? I'm assuming the wind solar numbers don't include storage. It would be interesting to run these with storage at projected values (say $150 and $100 per kWh) . Time is certainly a factor as is resiliency. For instance, 20 distributed battery backed solar installs would be more resilient than a single nuclear plant.
And from the first article you linked to: "one scientist's controversial theory" That says it all. If it had merit, other scientists would follow up.
The people who SHOULD be embarassed are the ones yelling "hoax" and screaming "government grants" and "government conspiracy", while ignoring the largest and biggest financial interests, oil and gas. Unfortunately, in a country where Donald Trump can be a presidential contender, who knows. When the denial finally ends, they'll probably just blame Obama like they do for everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
The Bolt's looking more and more like another compliance car. Notice they minimized any capital investment, outsourcing the drivetrain to LG and building it on the same line as the Sonic. They are only offering it in CARB states and at negative margins of 9k, which happen to coincide with the available ZEV credits. https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
I think it's clear by now that Tesla is 100% committed to the success of the EV. If the ZEV requirements were dropped tomorrow, GM would ax the Bolt without hesitation. As the old saying goes, vote with your wallet.
Oh, and I don't live in a CARB state, so no Bolt for me.
I suspect Africans will skip coal just like they skipped land lines for cell phones.
For electricity, African's don't have the demand we have. They need to charge their cell phones and run lights. Currently they travel hours just to charge their phone and use candles for light. As for heating, wood works well in many places and is much easier to gather than mining coal. These guys http://www.azuri-technologies.... have a pretty decent effort for solar electric in Africa.
Couldn't the Netflix app check the available hardware accelerated codecs, and choose the best one?
Way to make his point.
And actually pull up Tesla's financial report before spouting that nonsense. I'll help. http://files.shareholder.com/d...
See the lines "Revenues" and "Cost of Revenues", where the former is greater than the latter. That's profit. Something tells me game developers don't require billions of dollars in capital expenses for manufacturing facilities, service centers, etc. Geese, why do I bother. You're probably just trolling.
"never individually bought a car that cost more than $15k" You must be buying used or just buying the absolute cheapest new cars on the market. Don't compare used cars to new cars. You're absolutely right about the depreciation. The smartest thing to do financially is buy a 3 year old car with low miles. It's nearly 50% cheaper, but still practically new.
Now that that's out of the way, let's talk apples and apples. Looking forward to the Model 3, assuming a $35k MSRP, the 5 year TCO should be lower than a $35k BMW or something else in that price range. Why? $1,000 or more saved on gasoline per year. That's at least $5k over 5 years. If gas were to go back up to $3 - $4 per gallon, that would be up to $10k in savings. Reduced maintenance. No oil changes and air filter changes. While these aren't terribly expensive ($200-$300 per year), they're a nuisance. I value not having to carve out slots of time for oil changes.
Early adopter. Being an early adopter is never the financially prudent move. But when you buy your $10 DVD player from Wal-Mart, you should be thankful for the early adopters who shelled out $1,500 for the first DVD players because they made your cheap DVD player possible. Same with EVs. in 2010, battery costs were $1000 / kwh. Today, 6 years later they're under $200 / kwh and more advanced to boot. They're projected to fall under $100 / kwh in short time. This is thanks in large to the high volume producers/consumers of the "expensive" EVs.
There's nothing wrong with being financially prudent, but don't think just because your financial math doesn't work for you today, the math is "bleak" for EVs. And when you're buying your $15k used Model 3 in the future, remember to be thankful to the Model S/X and early Model 3 owners who made it a reality.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
"After going through all of his comments from this past weekend, it seems that Trump definitely wants a database of Syrian refugees, and he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a database for all Muslims -- though he isn’t actively calling for the latter. And we’ll warn you now that many of Trump’s comments strike us as contradictory or confusing."
The last line pretty much sums up Trump's "stances" - contradictory or confusing.
AC,
There's no way you can know Musk's history and NOT come to the same conclusion as the BasilBrush. The story of SpaceX's beginning is insane, consisting of Russians, rockets, bags of money, and balls of steel. Your easy dismissal reeks of ignorance. I'll get off your lawn now.
I spent 5 minutes charging my BEV to go 1500 miles. 5 seconds to plug it in at night and 5 seconds to unplug it in the morning. In my own house.
It would be OK if we were just arguing about different solutions to AGW, which is what you're doing. The biggest problem though, is the denialists argue that we don't have a problem. Actually, they'll take any stance as long at the outcome is - do nothing. You sound like a perfectly rational person, which seem to be in short supply.
There are plenty of Teslas in Norway. Pretty sure they handle snow just fine.
Will be interesting to see what they do in markets with actual competition, like Chattanooga, TN, which has fiber service: http://chattanoogagig.com/
Got a link? Why is someone a shill for stating a fact: https://www.charitywatch.org/r...
"bird-frying solar reflectors, or bird chopping windmills" This is how you lose all credibility.
Wow. Maximum Pessimism. The ability to travel long distances with an EV is practically here. Fast Charge DC and 200+ mile affordable (average price) EVs coming this year and the next and only increasing and growing cheaper afterwards. Please have a look and plugshare or Tesla's supercharger map. How well do you think gas cars would work without gas stations?
As for "Lithium is inadequate", do some research before stating something so false. Lithium-air, for instance, has a higher theoretical gravimetric energy density than gasoline, given that most of gasoline's energy is wasted as heat. The energy is combustion is not just from the gasoline. It also uses oxygen from the air. Today's lithium-ion batteries used are just adequate, but the potential exceeds that of petroleum. "Batteries are expensive" is so terribly short-sighted. The costs of plunged and are forcasts to continue under $100/kWh. And that's without any advancements. A short look at battery history shows we've come a long way in technology and costs and the EV revolution is driving R&D, which is key.
"AGW is not some immediate problem that needs to be solved tomorrow. It will unfold over decades, and the solution will also take decades."
The consequences will unfold over decades, but the problem is certainly immediate and it should have been "solved"/mitigated 15 years ago. I agree nearly 100% with your proposals as to how to address it. Anyone who thinks to world will revert to Amish style living tomorrow is just naive. The biggest problem we have is ignorance mostly due to the intentional spread of misinformation, the "Merchants of Doubt". We won't agree on how to solve the problem, but it's ridiculous that people still believe there isn't one.
The title is misleading.
We sampled 5000 12-second clips from our catalog, covering a wide range of genres and signal characteristics. With 3 codecs, 2 configurations, 3 resolutions (480p, 720p and 1080p) and 8 quality levels per configuration-resolution pair
and then
x265 and libvpx demonstrate superior compression performance compared to x264, with bitrate savings reaching up to 50% especially at the higher resolutions. x265 outperforms libvpx for almost all resolutions and quality metrics, but the performance gap narrows (or even reverses) at 1080p.
So the highest resolution they tested was 1080p and performance between the 2 codecs was very close with libvpx beating out x265 in some cases. As far as bandwidth goes, saving at 1080p and above is more valuable than saving at 480p. Practically everything we watch at home is streamed 1080p. I don't see that x265 is the winner here. And where are the 4k tests?
Is that you, Malcom?
https://youtu.be/jguarSWDcrM?t...
They're also very old and only interested in profit today. They have no interest in anything that requires real investment. Every serious energy projection shows renewables including wind and solar beating out coal and grid storage coming online. But the fact is, these old farts won't be around for another decade and could care less.
It's all relative, right. My Jeep Grand Cherokee Diesel can do nearly 700 miles on a tank. Should someone with a Civic have range anxiety because they can only do 350 miles? No, because even on longer trips, most of us stop every 2-3 hours even if we don't need fuel because we're not masochists.
Honda Civic starts at $18k. I bought a 2001 new for $14k, so you must be older than me to think they go for $12k ;-) Average price for a new car is $32k, so that's the mainstream target.
For those that can, charging at home is soooooooo much better than stopping and filling at the gas station. That's my experience. For apartments and condos, even a few cheap 110V outlets is a good start and would be sufficient for day to day charging.
There is a huge opportunity being overlooked here though. How many businesses would jump at the chance to have a customer for 30-60 minutes. I've already seen shopping centers with Level 2 chargers. I think as more EVs hit the road we'll see a charging infrastructure in restaurants, grocery stores, movie theatres, malls, and so on. Chargers pretty much everywhere.
"An Agency like the NSA could record all your data packets and brute-force them pretty quickly, if they so chose"
So, you're claiming AES has been broken?
"The climate change proponents ask for a lot."
All I (and I suspect most rational people) want is for deniers to quit acting like it's all a hoax or that there's this huge uncertainty. You don't need to lift a finger since science and engineering is obviously not your field ("The science" is actually a mass of utterly impenetrable papers - tens of thousands of them, all refering to each other, and usually without complete data sets. Almost no one can read and understand them all.").
It's not like we're trying to control the climate (a statement I frequently hear from deniers). We're already manipulating the climate because we're changing the atmospheric composition with emissions. The goal is to STOP changing the atmosphere and therefore STOP affecting the climate.
"the only thing they are interested in is reducing the rest of humanity to a standard of living last seen before electricity became a thing"
Bull shit. I heard Rush Limbaugh say the same thing today. Just as we used to burn wood, and moved on after we saw the forests were becoming depleted, it's time to move on again. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Can you post a link to this study please? I'm assuming the wind solar numbers don't include storage. It would be interesting to run these with storage at projected values (say $150 and $100 per kWh) . Time is certainly a factor as is resiliency. For instance, 20 distributed battery backed solar installs would be more resilient than a single nuclear plant.
I checked out the second article and followed the sources. The root source was http://ufosightingshotspot.blo.... What a crock.
And from the first article you linked to: "one scientist's controversial theory" That says it all. If it had merit, other scientists would follow up.
The people who SHOULD be embarassed are the ones yelling "hoax" and screaming "government grants" and "government conspiracy", while ignoring the largest and biggest financial interests, oil and gas. Unfortunately, in a country where Donald Trump can be a presidential contender, who knows. When the denial finally ends, they'll probably just blame Obama like they do for everything else.
Thank you! It's so easy to criticize and point out others' mistakes.
It's much more difficult to implement solutions to problems yourself. We need more of the latter.