This is the insurmountable problem with electric cars. You physically cannot stuff enough electricity into the battery quickly enough to make recharging as fast as refuelling a conventional car.
"This is the insurmountable problem with going to the moon. You physically cannot stuff enough energy into a rocket to get there."
In 1960, that statement would have been just as true as yours. Sounds silly now that it's been done, doesn't it?
Your argument looks great...but you try to prove that up is down. There is a clear positive correlation between an electric motor's power and its efficiency. I'm not interested in a convoluted argument that's contrary to fact.
I don't know the economics of these for the average person, but right now America is consuming a big chunk of the energy the world produces and is way far ahead per capita than most other countries...
"Per capita" is the wrong benchmark for energy consumption. Per-GDP is far more appropriate. And since the U.S. currently accounts for nearly a quarter of the world's GDP, we're actually not that inefficient all things considered.
For the Roadster's battery chemistry it really does look like the calendar life is the bigger issue. Both come into play; if you cycle the thing 500 times in the first year you'll have a significant range loss. But so to will you see a significant loss if you just park it for 5 years.
The Model S is supposed to have a newer chemistry with dramatic improvements on both fronts.
My point is that this thing has way, way too much acceleration and that as a result, there are gasoline cars that come close to it in terms of ongoing operating costs. The whole point of going electric is to lower your costs, and if it isn't doing that, why not buy a luxury gas-powered car? Give me 0-60 in 7-8 seconds and that's plenty.
Your ICE assumptions are catching up to you. You seem to think that if they decreased the acceleration it would also decrease operating expenses. That sounds reasonable, and it would be true for any ICE vehicle...but it's not at all correct for an EV. There's actually a positive correlation between power and efficiency in electric motors. So if Tesla made it slower, they'd also increase the operating cost.
If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway, it will cost less (@$3 per gallon) than this Tesla car to operate and will cost over $40,000 less to buy the car.
Honda is selling a Fit hybrid for under $10k? Awesome!
Don't get me wrong, I agree that regressive tax breaks are bad in principle. In this particular case, however, the price of the tax break may well be less than the cost of the negative externalities avoided by purchasing an EV. At least until we get some sort of cap-and-trade (or better, a real carbon tax) putting a new ICE car on the street probably costs the taxpayers quite a bit...it's just a lot harder to see.
The battery pack costs $10000 and lasts only about 200 charges...
Source?
Tesla has made lots of statements suggesting the Model S pack will be one of the new nano-Li chemistries which routinely get thousands of charges with minimal degradation. Even the Roadster's fairly ordinary pack gets more than twice your figure.
I was figuring the price for fuel, not the cost for taxes to maintain roads, etc. that you are also currently avoiding with electric.
Most states charge you extra at the DMV for your EV registration to offset the gas taxes they miss out on.
Current plan @Tesla that you get a $30k battery change at 100k miles.
No, the current offer from Tesla is to pre-pay $12k just like the parent said. And by the time these things really need to be replaced they'll be cheaper still; we're looking at a remarkably steady 9% annual improvement in price/Whr for Li batteries.
But also in 1 year time frame all current batteries lose 40% of capacity, every year of use...
WHAT!?!? Where on God's green Earth did you hear that? Tesla says that after 5 years and 100k miles the pack should hold 80% original capacity. If you have other ideas we'll need some data.
Since the gear box's are a big deal with Tesla...
The gearbox was a big deal, until they scrapped it for a single speed. The new setup should be maintenance free and damn reliable.
It would be nice if people could stop pointing fingers and judging without having at least some understanding of the issues involved.
Just because you can come up with a couple of corner cases where living a long way from work is justified doesn't mean the parent didn't have a firm understanding of the issue. He did. The vast majority of distance commuters freely choose to live in our vast exurbs. And his larger point is even more correct: we Americans are addicted to space, and our absolute unwillingness to control sprawl is the problem, not the cost of the fuel we use to deal with it.
You don't need to be a marketing guru to see that calling it the "Impact" was sending the wrong sort of message on safety.
Totally. Watching the "how does it go?" ads for the EV1 is pretty mind-blowing; they really, really, really didn't want to sell these things. The ads are black-and white and show weird long shadows of people the whole time, while dark music plays and a sinister voice asks how the EV could ever possibly work. They don't even show the car...much less in bright colors with scantily-clad women, like they show you when they want you to buy something.
no. the amount of energy it takes to maintain a honda accord sized car at 55mph is about 30KW.
It is? I would love to know where you came up with that. Let me do some back-of-napkin stuff:
The Tesla Roadster goes 244 miles on a 53kWhr pack. That's 217Whr/mile.
217Whr/mile * 55 miles/1hr = 11.935kW
Sure, an Accord is somewhat bigger and less aerodynamic than the Roadster...but does it really take more than twice as much energy? Also, from what I've read the Model S is expected to achieve similar Whr/mi to the Roadster...so I guess ultimately we don't much care how much juice an Accord takes.
I've seen some of the electric drag-racing nuts have put together "dump chargers" like this: generally just a huge stack of lead-acid batteries. Thing is, your home isn't likely where you want that capability; usually when you get home you'll be there a while. Sure, maybe a lunch break here and there, or whatever...but what you really want dump-charging for is a "gas station" kind of model. And unfortunately I'm not sure it's meant to be; there's a problem with demand. Basically, if 90%+ of drivers don't need more than the single-charge range, that leaves less than 10% of people who need to quick-charge at your station. Which might not be a big enough market to support the density of stations we'd need to feel comfortable.
900KW of power....if the connector was a 208V connector then that's about 4000 DC amps for ten minutes.
If it was a 208V single-phase connector, you'd be right. But I don't know of any such beast; the common 208 three-phase tap would require 1442A to provide that wattage. Or you could use a 480V source (which Tesla claims will be an option) at 625A. Or you could get more realistic about your pack size...I don't know where you came up with the idea of a 150kWhr pack, but that's kind of a pipe dream at the moment.
Tesla doesn't recommend you charge it in 45 minutes (at least they don't recommend it for the Roadster, this has a similar pack so I presume this is the same).
The Roadster can't charge in 45 minutes. And the details of when the Model S will be able to aren't clear, but seem to involve a 480V charger (!) which would be much heavier-duty than the Roadster's unit. But most importantly, your assumption that the pack will be similar is contrary to Tesla's statements. The new pack will have a different chemistry, and though they haven't discussed it in detail yet, the characteristics (cycle life and charge time in particular) sound a lot like a LiFEPO4 or other nano-Li chemistry. In which case 45 minutes to full might actually be doable.
Obilig note that 150gb is really 75gb DOWN and 75gb UP.
No, it's 150GB. You get to choose how much you use for downloading vs. uploading, and I dare say very few of us are using equal portions.
While I'm at it, I don't see how this adds up to $150. I see they are adding the $75 max extra-data fee to the highest package price of $75, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If their overage fees are capped and you know you're going to use more than 175GB of data transfer, why get the highest package? Get the cheapest package for $30 and let them charge you the extra $75. In other words, I think this should be titled, "Time Warner offers Unlimited Data Transfer for $105."
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I think you guys underestimate the size and expense of a generator powerful enough for this.
That's going to be one hell of a heavy gas can.
This is the insurmountable problem with electric cars. You physically cannot stuff enough electricity into the battery quickly enough to make recharging as fast as refuelling a conventional car.
"This is the insurmountable problem with going to the moon. You physically cannot stuff enough energy into a rocket to get there."
In 1960, that statement would have been just as true as yours. Sounds silly now that it's been done, doesn't it?
Your argument looks great...but you try to prove that up is down. There is a clear positive correlation between an electric motor's power and its efficiency. I'm not interested in a convoluted argument that's contrary to fact.
If I had the money, it would be a no-brainer for me. Since I don't have the money, it's still a no-brainer, but on the side of "no".
HA! Yeah, count me in on that one...
This whole conversation is a great example of why car companies don't have the engineers design the cars.
I don't know the economics of these for the average person, but right now America is consuming a big chunk of the energy the world produces and is way far ahead per capita than most other countries...
"Per capita" is the wrong benchmark for energy consumption. Per-GDP is far more appropriate. And since the U.S. currently accounts for nearly a quarter of the world's GDP, we're actually not that inefficient all things considered.
For the Roadster's battery chemistry it really does look like the calendar life is the bigger issue. Both come into play; if you cycle the thing 500 times in the first year you'll have a significant range loss. But so to will you see a significant loss if you just park it for 5 years. The Model S is supposed to have a newer chemistry with dramatic improvements on both fronts.
My point is that this thing has way, way too much acceleration and that as a result, there are gasoline cars that come close to it in terms of ongoing operating costs. The whole point of going electric is to lower your costs, and if it isn't doing that, why not buy a luxury gas-powered car? Give me 0-60 in 7-8 seconds and that's plenty.
Your ICE assumptions are catching up to you. You seem to think that if they decreased the acceleration it would also decrease operating expenses. That sounds reasonable, and it would be true for any ICE vehicle...but it's not at all correct for an EV. There's actually a positive correlation between power and efficiency in electric motors. So if Tesla made it slower, they'd also increase the operating cost.
If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway, it will cost less (@$3 per gallon) than this Tesla car to operate and will cost over $40,000 less to buy the car.
Honda is selling a Fit hybrid for under $10k? Awesome!
Don't get me wrong, I agree that regressive tax breaks are bad in principle. In this particular case, however, the price of the tax break may well be less than the cost of the negative externalities avoided by purchasing an EV. At least until we get some sort of cap-and-trade (or better, a real carbon tax) putting a new ICE car on the street probably costs the taxpayers quite a bit...it's just a lot harder to see.
Please spare us the "long tailpipe" crap. The grid generation to run a Tesla Roadster causes about 1/10 the pollution per-mile of an ICE car.
The battery pack costs $10000 and lasts only about 200 charges...
Source?
Tesla has made lots of statements suggesting the Model S pack will be one of the new nano-Li chemistries which routinely get thousands of charges with minimal degradation. Even the Roadster's fairly ordinary pack gets more than twice your figure.
I was figuring the price for fuel, not the cost for taxes to maintain roads, etc. that you are also currently avoiding with electric.
Most states charge you extra at the DMV for your EV registration to offset the gas taxes they miss out on.
Current plan @Tesla that you get a $30k battery change at 100k miles.
No, the current offer from Tesla is to pre-pay $12k just like the parent said. And by the time these things really need to be replaced they'll be cheaper still; we're looking at a remarkably steady 9% annual improvement in price/Whr for Li batteries.
But also in 1 year time frame all current batteries lose 40% of capacity, every year of use...
WHAT!?!? Where on God's green Earth did you hear that? Tesla says that after 5 years and 100k miles the pack should hold 80% original capacity. If you have other ideas we'll need some data.
Since the gear box's are a big deal with Tesla...
The gearbox was a big deal, until they scrapped it for a single speed. The new setup should be maintenance free and damn reliable.
It would be nice if people could stop pointing fingers and judging without having at least some understanding of the issues involved.
Just because you can come up with a couple of corner cases where living a long way from work is justified doesn't mean the parent didn't have a firm understanding of the issue. He did. The vast majority of distance commuters freely choose to live in our vast exurbs. And his larger point is even more correct: we Americans are addicted to space, and our absolute unwillingness to control sprawl is the problem, not the cost of the fuel we use to deal with it.
You don't need to be a marketing guru to see that calling it the "Impact" was sending the wrong sort of message on safety.
Totally. Watching the "how does it go?" ads for the EV1 is pretty mind-blowing; they really, really, really didn't want to sell these things. The ads are black-and white and show weird long shadows of people the whole time, while dark music plays and a sinister voice asks how the EV could ever possibly work. They don't even show the car...much less in bright colors with scantily-clad women, like they show you when they want you to buy something.
no. the amount of energy it takes to maintain a honda accord sized car at 55mph is about 30KW.
It is? I would love to know where you came up with that. Let me do some back-of-napkin stuff:
The Tesla Roadster goes 244 miles on a 53kWhr pack. That's 217Whr/mile.
217Whr/mile * 55 miles/1hr = 11.935kW
Sure, an Accord is somewhat bigger and less aerodynamic than the Roadster...but does it really take more than twice as much energy? Also, from what I've read the Model S is expected to achieve similar Whr/mi to the Roadster...so I guess ultimately we don't much care how much juice an Accord takes.
I've seen some of the electric drag-racing nuts have put together "dump chargers" like this: generally just a huge stack of lead-acid batteries. Thing is, your home isn't likely where you want that capability; usually when you get home you'll be there a while. Sure, maybe a lunch break here and there, or whatever...but what you really want dump-charging for is a "gas station" kind of model. And unfortunately I'm not sure it's meant to be; there's a problem with demand. Basically, if 90%+ of drivers don't need more than the single-charge range, that leaves less than 10% of people who need to quick-charge at your station. Which might not be a big enough market to support the density of stations we'd need to feel comfortable.
I know the 99.5% was just pulled out of your ass, but I would like to...
...pull numbers out of your own ass?
900KW of power....if the connector was a 208V connector then that's about 4000 DC amps for ten minutes.
If it was a 208V single-phase connector, you'd be right. But I don't know of any such beast; the common 208 three-phase tap would require 1442A to provide that wattage. Or you could use a 480V source (which Tesla claims will be an option) at 625A. Or you could get more realistic about your pack size...I don't know where you came up with the idea of a 150kWhr pack, but that's kind of a pipe dream at the moment.
Tesla doesn't recommend you charge it in 45 minutes (at least they don't recommend it for the Roadster, this has a similar pack so I presume this is the same).
The Roadster can't charge in 45 minutes. And the details of when the Model S will be able to aren't clear, but seem to involve a 480V charger (!) which would be much heavier-duty than the Roadster's unit. But most importantly, your assumption that the pack will be similar is contrary to Tesla's statements. The new pack will have a different chemistry, and though they haven't discussed it in detail yet, the characteristics (cycle life and charge time in particular) sound a lot like a LiFEPO4 or other nano-Li chemistry. In which case 45 minutes to full might actually be doable.
One big reason is that if they only gave money to US companies they'd be sued through the WTO immediately.
Barring an order of magnitude increase in electricity prices, definitely. Right now operating costs are under $.05/mile.
Obilig note that 150gb is really 75gb DOWN and 75gb UP.
No, it's 150GB. You get to choose how much you use for downloading vs. uploading, and I dare say very few of us are using equal portions.
While I'm at it, I don't see how this adds up to $150. I see they are adding the $75 max extra-data fee to the highest package price of $75, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If their overage fees are capped and you know you're going to use more than 175GB of data transfer, why get the highest package? Get the cheapest package for $30 and let them charge you the extra $75. In other words, I think this should be titled, "Time Warner offers Unlimited Data Transfer for $105."
I've put in more hours playing "Settlers of Catan" in the Xbox live arcade for $12.50
Well, Catan is pretty badass...