The Volt is a "parallel" hybrid - the engine can power the wheels.
Not true. The Volt is a serial hybrid. The ICE only powers a generator. The power from the generator can be fed both into the electric motor, or can be used to recharge the batteries.
The current iMacs, Macs, Macbooks, Macbook Air, iPhone 5, iPad and iPad Mini are certainly not dull and uninspiring. And the specs of every one are amongst the best in the industry. Customer satisfaction is the very best in the industry, and has been every year for more than a decade.
First question, is there only one battery company in the world?
The idea behind your question is that competition always ensures the lowest price for products. That is clearly not true, even in the naive theories of Adam Smith. It's even less true when you consider that the true mechanism is game theory, and Nash showed there are other equilibriums.
Second question, what has price got to do with cost?
Lower the costs and reduce the profit margins by cutting out middle men and using economies of scale, and you can reduce the price. If you are motivated to do so.
You can only go for big margins when your products offer major value over the competition.
Exactly. That was Apple's problem in the 90s. Their product offerings had become dated and uninspiring. Now they justify their premium. That's how they made a big turnaround.
It sounds like insurance. You are paying someone else to take on the risk. That costs extra money, but it's predictable.
Personally I self-insure everything for which there isn't a legal necessity to have insurance. I don't see any point in paying someone else to take a risk when I can do it myself.
If it's anything like bottled LPG, no thanks. Sometimes when you go to get a bottle they don't have any of the type you need in stock, and you have to chase round to find one. Then there's the problem of what you do when you run out of LPG and the shop is closed.
Your opinion is that batteries don't make incremental improvements, but only revolutionary improvements once in long while when a completely new battery chemistry comes along.
I'm not entirely convinced "economy of scale" even applies much to Lithium Ion batteries. Their cost these days is largely related to mining and processing the materials that go into them.
Two things. One is that things are always cheaper the more you buy. So those mined materials come cheaper if you have a big manufacturing facility.
Second is that actually most of the raw materials for the batteries will come from recycling old batteries. At the moment Tesla only does a minimal reprocessing themselves, then send old batteries off to 3rd parties to recycle. And those materials don;t come back.
The new factory will recycle as much as possible of the batteries into new batteries. Of the order of 90%.
Economy of scale and efficient recycling of old batteries.
If there was a way of doing so, wouldn't somebody be doing it already?
The incentives for battery companies and an EV company are different. A battery company is quite happy if the market price of a battery remains high. An EV company wants it as low as possible.
Seems to me there are many people out there who think Elan Musk is some combination of Midas & Canute.
Seems to me that as soon as a successful tech entrepreneur starts to become a household name, there's a irrational wave of vitriol and spite comes across a minority of Slashdot posters.
In five years or so, when the owners of the first generation of hybrids face that battery upgrade, they might start selling quite cheaply.
Huh? The first generation of hybrids were the original Priuses, which are 17 years old. And user reports are that many of them are still running on original batteries. Replacement if needed is of the order of $2000.
even before the end of the battery life the battery would give diminished returns and it would hurt the resell value more then non electric cars.
ICE cars also give diminished returns over the years. Those MPG figures quoted for cars only apply to new cars. As engines, gearboxes and wheel bearings wear, so the efficiency falls, and you get less MPG.
If you keep the car long enough, you'll have to have the IC engine switched or reconditioned.
Of course with an EV, when the time does come to replace the batteries you'll probably get a new set that's even better than the original, with a greater range. Because the technology will have improved in the intervening years.
Note a depth mapping technique for each pixel isn't Doom-style restrictions unless the camera is in an unusual orientation.
It's just an analogy. One that illustrates that depth mapping doesn't give proper 3D.
What you -can't- know about are objects behind other objects from the camera's standpoint, or stuff behind the camera. This is mostly OK for faking depth of field.
Absolutely. But it's not still not 3D, it's 2.5D. No one said 2.5D wouldn't work for this application.
You have that the wrong way around. Sacrificing profitability for market share is the dangerous route.
Apple is the biggest and one of the longest established companies in tech. They've always valued profitability over market share. There's no short-termism here.
No. Betting exchanges such as Betfair charge money on the transaction. Traditional bookies such as this make individual bets against punters, at odds that they themselves set. They can and do make a loss on individual bets. But they make more than enough on the winning bets to cover that.
Indeed. With a traditional bookie such as this, you can only bet one way. The true probability of any of these things happening is significantly less than the supplied odds suggest.
Slashdot Mirror
The Volt is a "parallel" hybrid - the engine can power the wheels.
Not true. The Volt is a serial hybrid. The ICE only powers a generator. The power from the generator can be fed both into the electric motor, or can be used to recharge the batteries.
I'm afraid that's your wish rather than reality.
This was the 90s Mac before the iMac. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Dull beige PC looking thing with equally uninspiring specs.
The current iMacs, Macs, Macbooks, Macbook Air, iPhone 5, iPad and iPad Mini are certainly not dull and uninspiring. And the specs of every one are amongst the best in the industry. Customer satisfaction is the very best in the industry, and has been every year for more than a decade.
That's not necessarily true. With a deep framebuffer you can have multiple ZSamples including occluded objects.
Rather like the 2 samples I already pointed out for Doom? Are you getting the idea yet that you aren't telling me anything I don't already know?
Will it be half, which is what you claimed higher up about batteries (admittedly in reply to some imbecile who thought it'd be a tenth)?
Wow! One sentence and you managed to make comprehension errors on both short posts you mention.
I never claimed it would be half, and the person I replied to never claimed it would be a tenth.
And you fell into the trap of not considering that price is about negotiation and the power you have to negotiate.
First question, is there only one battery company in the world?
The idea behind your question is that competition always ensures the lowest price for products. That is clearly not true, even in the naive theories of Adam Smith. It's even less true when you consider that the true mechanism is game theory, and Nash showed there are other equilibriums.
Second question, what has price got to do with cost?
Lower the costs and reduce the profit margins by cutting out middle men and using economies of scale, and you can reduce the price. If you are motivated to do so.
You can only go for big margins when your products offer major value over the competition.
Exactly. That was Apple's problem in the 90s. Their product offerings had become dated and uninspiring. Now they justify their premium. That's how they made a big turnaround.
It sounds like insurance. You are paying someone else to take on the risk. That costs extra money, but it's predictable.
Personally I self-insure everything for which there isn't a legal necessity to have insurance. I don't see any point in paying someone else to take a risk when I can do it myself.
If it's anything like bottled LPG, no thanks. Sometimes when you go to get a bottle they don't have any of the type you need in stock, and you have to chase round to find one. Then there's the problem of what you do when you run out of LPG and the shop is closed.
Halving the price would be an enormous gain!
And I rather suspect you will find it's not.
Sure. If you are a socialite of 100 years ago. New money these days is Tech. Oil is old money. Indeed it's heading towards an industry in decline.
Your opinion is that batteries don't make incremental improvements, but only revolutionary improvements once in long while when a completely new battery chemistry comes along.
Your opinion is completely wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I'm not entirely convinced "economy of scale" even applies much to Lithium Ion batteries. Their cost these days is largely related to mining and processing the materials that go into them.
Two things. One is that things are always cheaper the more you buy. So those mined materials come cheaper if you have a big manufacturing facility.
Second is that actually most of the raw materials for the batteries will come from recycling old batteries. At the moment Tesla only does a minimal reprocessing themselves, then send old batteries off to 3rd parties to recycle. And those materials don;t come back.
The new factory will recycle as much as possible of the batteries into new batteries. Of the order of 90%.
I have no idea why his electric car brings up so much animosity with people though.
Because conservatives can't stand change. And because the media that forms their opinions is funded by old money that's tied to oil.
How are they going to make them cheaper?
Economy of scale and efficient recycling of old batteries.
If there was a way of doing so, wouldn't somebody be doing it already?
The incentives for battery companies and an EV company are different. A battery company is quite happy if the market price of a battery remains high. An EV company wants it as low as possible.
Seems to me there are many people out there who think Elan Musk is some combination of Midas & Canute.
Seems to me that as soon as a successful tech entrepreneur starts to become a household name, there's a irrational wave of vitriol and spite comes across a minority of Slashdot posters.
"standard" usage will reach about 2/4 years before the degrade in mileage and performance warrants a replacement.
Bullshit. You have made that up.
In five years or so, when the owners of the first generation of hybrids face that battery upgrade, they might start selling quite cheaply.
Huh? The first generation of hybrids were the original Priuses, which are 17 years old. And user reports are that many of them are still running on original batteries. Replacement if needed is of the order of $2000.
even before the end of the battery life the battery would give diminished returns and it would hurt the resell value more then non electric cars.
ICE cars also give diminished returns over the years. Those MPG figures quoted for cars only apply to new cars. As engines, gearboxes and wheel bearings wear, so the efficiency falls, and you get less MPG.
If you keep the car long enough, you'll have to have the IC engine switched or reconditioned.
Of course with an EV, when the time does come to replace the batteries you'll probably get a new set that's even better than the original, with a greater range. Because the technology will have improved in the intervening years.
I hope the guy qualifies for an award some time soon. A Darwin award.
Note a depth mapping technique for each pixel isn't Doom-style restrictions unless the camera is in an unusual orientation.
It's just an analogy. One that illustrates that depth mapping doesn't give proper 3D.
What you -can't- know about are objects behind other objects from the camera's standpoint, or stuff behind the camera. This is mostly OK for faking depth of field.
Absolutely. But it's not still not 3D, it's 2.5D. No one said 2.5D wouldn't work for this application.
If you have a depth channel you could displace a 3D plane in camera space and render that in 3D.
No, you'd only have the surfaces that are first hit with raytracing from the eye. That's not 3D. That's why it's 2.5D.
The real problem isn't 2.5D/3D it's the fact that there is no parallax information for occluded information.
But that's exactly the problem that 2.5D brings. You don't know what's behind foreground objects.
You have that the wrong way around. Sacrificing profitability for market share is the dangerous route.
Apple is the biggest and one of the longest established companies in tech. They've always valued profitability over market share. There's no short-termism here.
No. Betting exchanges such as Betfair charge money on the transaction. Traditional bookies such as this make individual bets against punters, at odds that they themselves set. They can and do make a loss on individual bets. But they make more than enough on the winning bets to cover that.
Indeed. With a traditional bookie such as this, you can only bet one way. The true probability of any of these things happening is significantly less than the supplied odds suggest.