Chargeback is basically fraud protection - if someone's credit card is stolen they can recover any lost money.
You should be able to fight a chargeback if you can prove that you actually shipped the goods to the sellers address (i.e. the billing address of the credit card). However, I doubt that PayPal gives you the latter.
First, if you had actually read the Tesla Motoros site, the few dollars is closer to ~$2, not $6.
If you had actually read it, they mention "discounted rates" for electric vehicles, while I was using the standard rate in my estimate.
again if you could read that same page, the car can charge from "totally dead" to "fully charged" in ~3.5 hours.
And if you had read the whitepaper on their battery system (find the link below), you'd know that their battery stores 53 kWh, which is pretty close to my guess of 50 kWh. And if you're charging that in half the time I assumed, you'll arrive at over twice the (already quite high) power estimate I've come up with - over 12.5 kW. (How exactly they want to draw 12.5 kW from a 110V electrical outlet is a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe they're just full of sh1t or the charging time will be significantly longer than 3.5 hours if you use a 110V outlet instead of a 220V one)
by canceling out some of the existing subsidized infrastructure for trucks*
Why just infrastructure and not the tax break for truck diesel ?
Then again... try selling that to the many, many people working in the trucking industry. You'll be branded an evil commie hell-bent on driving the hard-workin' American out of his job.
Watch the moron poster that doesn't know what he's talking about.
Math is hard. Let me explain it to you.
Take "a few dollars". Say... $6, since I'm overly optimistic. Take the current price for a kWh of electricity - last I heard it was around $0.12/kWh. Assume that you'll charge the car overnight - 8 hours.
Now, here comes the hard part. Pay close attention:
$6 buys 50 kWh at $0.12/kWh.
50 kWh, spread out over 8 hours, requires a power of 6.25 kW.
6.25 kW is quite a lot for household use, especially if it's drawn by a single device.
I am *not* making those trips with 2 young children on any form of public transportation.
Well, a 3-hour train ride is much more fun for kids (due to being able to run around, having more space, etc) than being strapped into a car seat for 3 hours. That is, if you have decent quality trains. If you have _fast_ trains, then those 250 miles would be a 2-hour train ride, which oughta beat the heck out of driving, especially at the slow speeds allowed in the States.
If those numbers are correct, we are at a 48,451,906 gallon/day shortfall of US domestic production capacity.
As far as I know, Europe has plenty of the stuff you know as "regular" for sale. Ironically, the USs thirst for it has driven the price up to the level of premium over here (which most cars use, anyway), leading to many gas stations discontinue the sale of regular gasoline.
So all this carbon that people are taking out of the ground and putting into the air -- where did it come from?
Outgassing. Yep, even planets have to fart.
All the carbon locked up in fossil fuels was in the atmosphere at some point in time, but not all of it was in the atmosphere at the same time.
Also, how many of the crops that we depend on today, which in turn depend on certain climates, were in existence when the CO2 level in the atmosphere was "naturally" higher than it was today ? How many of the species of fish, etc, that we depend on for food were in the oceans when their acidity was much higher than it was today due to more dissolved CO2 ?
So this new oil deposit is going to last how long ? Two generations ? Ten ? That's not "independence", it's just moving the inevitable out of the public view for a while.
True energy independence will only come from a virtually inexhaustible (100+ generations) energy source that can supply virtually unlimited (scales with increasing energy demands) power. Oil deposits (or fossil fuels in general), in any form, completely miss both points. Nuclear fission probably fails both, too. Solar (in its many forms - biomass, water/wind, etc) might do, but we'll eventually have to collect it in space when we run out of space on Earth, and get much, much better at harvesting it. Fusion would be nice, but as always, is about 50 years in the future. Geothermal and tidal might be virtually inexhaustible, but don't scale all the well.
Eh, reality seems to disagree with you, and the "free market" does, too. Unless you're running your oil-drilling operations on a non-profit basis (good luck with that), oil will cost whatever the consumers are willing to pay for it (and the difference between that number and the cost of getting at oil is quite large).
I want these detectors to be made a mandatory addition to any camera that is used when
interviewing politicians. Data from the detector should be processed into a simple BS-o-meter gauge that is displayed along with the interview.
NOTE: Only a SINGLE ATOM of the wrong isotope (see previous list) inside the human body in the wrong location (lung, bone, thyroid, etc..) and that person is nearly guaranteed to get cancer (from a single atom of the stuff). It is true the human body can cope some with carcinogens and mutagens, but it only takes one aggressive immortal cell of cancer (that the immune system does not remove) to eventually kill someone.
Erm, sorry. The chance for that happening is pretty much zero. Cells don't simply become cancerous through one single mutation - it's actually a gradual process in which a cell population literally evolves to become more cancer-like (the more cancer-like a single cell, the faster it will reproduce, which gives an evolutionary advantage to these cells) as the built-in safety mechanisms are destroyed. Actually developing cancer means that a large number of things have gone wrong.
Also, most of the body is something other than DNA. The chance for one single atom to decay in the right place and at the right time to actually damage DNA is very, very miniscule in the first place.
Oh, come on what?
Sorry, that was a bit too ambiguous. I meant "Oh, come on, you don't need to mention a car from 25 years ago. You can easily get 50 mpg and decent acceleration from a modern diesel vehicle, just maybe not one that's sold in the US".
In fact, I think the Audi A2 would pretty much fulfill the criteria of this X-Prize already, or need very little modification to do so (its 80 mpg version didn't have AC, and unfortunately Audi stopped making it since it was simply too expensive (due to all the expensive materials used, e.g. Aluminum) for a "small car". The VW Lupo might fit the bill, too, but it was also discontinued.
The threat from mercury is 100% real. Don't believe me? Ask you baby's doctor how much tuna your baby can have.
Do you mean the mercury that might be released if you break a CFL, or the mercury that is released all the time by the coal-fired power plants that you need to power all of your indandescent bulbs ?
My 1981 Rabbit Diesel literally took 45 seconds to go 0 to 60, and couldn't go over 75 mph without a hill or tailwind -- so I'm guessing it's not going to win this. On the other hand, it did get 52 mph if you drove it right -- not ultra-efficient, but not bad at all for a real world car, especially considering that it was made 27 years ago.
Oh, come on. My 2004 VW Touran 2.0 TDI goes from 0 to 60 in 10.3 seconds and easily goes 100 mph. And it gets 48 mpg on the highway (@75 mph, loaded with 2 adults, 2 kids and luggage) even when you do wasteful things like letting it idle for 10 minutes during a break on a rest stop. And it has lots of cargo space (or two extra seats and a little bit of cargo space), automatic transmission, AC and whatnot.
On the other hand, to win that prize I'd probably start with some of VWs newest gasoline engines (the 1.4 TSI) and design the car around that (maybe doing a hybrid, but definitely adding stuff like a transmission optimized for fuel economy and other such stuff).
for the last 200 years we have not lived in balance, consuming too much, not producing enough and not respecting the balance of ecologies and their requirements.
You're giving our earlier ancestors way, way, way too much credit. Ever wonder why the north coast of Africa is a desert and not a palm tree forest ? Ask the Romans.
There's a lot of money to be made in genetically modifying crops wether to make them resistant to drought, fungus, insects, increase yields, etc.
The most money is to be made in genetically modifying crops to be highly tolerant to the herbi-/fungi-/insecticide made by your company. Bonus points (money) for making any seeds of this strain unable to germinate. (You mention the one company that does this in your posting, why don't you mention what exactly these guys do ?)
(And, sorry, but "resistant to drought" ? Plants need water just like any other higher life form on this planet. All the genetic engineering in the world won't magically make your plants grow without water.)
I don't care what Wikipedia says, anyone with a decent physics or engineering background will te4ll you that a chemical explosive is not going to make a magnetic pulse.
The exact design involves an inductor (coil) which is filled with an explosive. To generate the EMP, a high current is fed through the inductor (which stores quite a bit of energy), then the explosive charge is detonated and the energy stored in the inductor is released when it is blown up in the right way.
It's probably also quite deadly to any bystanders due to all the shrapnel from the coil.
Slashdot Mirror
You should be able to fight a chargeback if you can prove that you actually shipped the goods to the sellers address (i.e. the billing address of the credit card). However, I doubt that PayPal gives you the latter.
Sue them and/or report them to the police ?
Do you have any recourse against PayPal messing with (keeping) your money in the name of fraud prevention ?
Yep. How about you go and practice that, too ?
First, if you had actually read the Tesla Motoros site, the few dollars is closer to ~$2, not $6.
If you had actually read it, they mention "discounted rates" for electric vehicles, while I was using the standard rate in my estimate.
again if you could read that same page, the car can charge from "totally dead" to "fully charged" in ~3.5 hours.
And if you had read the whitepaper on their battery system (find the link below), you'd know that their battery stores 53 kWh, which is pretty close to my guess of 50 kWh. And if you're charging that in half the time I assumed, you'll arrive at over twice the (already quite high) power estimate I've come up with - over 12.5 kW. (How exactly they want to draw 12.5 kW from a 110V electrical outlet is a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe they're just full of sh1t or the charging time will be significantly longer than 3.5 hours if you use a 110V outlet instead of a 220V one)
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf
Why just infrastructure and not the tax break for truck diesel ?
Then again ... try selling that to the many, many people working in the trucking industry. You'll be branded an evil commie hell-bent on driving the hard-workin' American out of his job.
Math is hard. Let me explain it to you.
Take "a few dollars". Say
Now, here comes the hard part. Pay close attention:
$6 buys 50 kWh at $0.12/kWh.
50 kWh, spread out over 8 hours, requires a power of 6.25 kW.
6.25 kW is quite a lot for household use, especially if it's drawn by a single device.
Because you don't want to be completely dependent on the political climate in other nations.
Watch the electric grid go up in smoke as everyone plugs in their car and starts drawing power in the kW range.
Higher demand -> higher prices. How much fuel do you think all those generators, humvees, tanks, helicopters, fighter jets, etc need ?
Well, a 3-hour train ride is much more fun for kids (due to being able to run around, having more space, etc) than being strapped into a car seat for 3 hours. That is, if you have decent quality trains. If you have _fast_ trains, then those 250 miles would be a 2-hour train ride, which oughta beat the heck out of driving, especially at the slow speeds allowed in the States.
As far as I know, Europe has plenty of the stuff you know as "regular" for sale. Ironically, the USs thirst for it has driven the price up to the level of premium over here (which most cars use, anyway), leading to many gas stations discontinue the sale of regular gasoline.
2. Sell account information.
3. Close bank account.
Repeat.
Outgassing. Yep, even planets have to fart.
All the carbon locked up in fossil fuels was in the atmosphere at some point in time, but not all of it was in the atmosphere at the same time.
Also, how many of the crops that we depend on today, which in turn depend on certain climates, were in existence when the CO2 level in the atmosphere was "naturally" higher than it was today ? How many of the species of fish, etc, that we depend on for food were in the oceans when their acidity was much higher than it was today due to more dissolved CO2 ?
True energy independence will only come from a virtually inexhaustible (100+ generations) energy source that can supply virtually unlimited (scales with increasing energy demands) power. Oil deposits (or fossil fuels in general), in any form, completely miss both points. Nuclear fission probably fails both, too. Solar (in its many forms - biomass, water/wind, etc) might do, but we'll eventually have to collect it in space when we run out of space on Earth, and get much, much better at harvesting it. Fusion would be nice, but as always, is about 50 years in the future. Geothermal and tidal might be virtually inexhaustible, but don't scale all the well.
Eh, reality seems to disagree with you, and the "free market" does, too. Unless you're running your oil-drilling operations on a non-profit basis (good luck with that), oil will cost whatever the consumers are willing to pay for it (and the difference between that number and the cost of getting at oil is quite large).
I want these detectors to be made a mandatory addition to any camera that is used when interviewing politicians. Data from the detector should be processed into a simple BS-o-meter gauge that is displayed along with the interview.
Erm, sorry. The chance for that happening is pretty much zero. Cells don't simply become cancerous through one single mutation - it's actually a gradual process in which a cell population literally evolves to become more cancer-like (the more cancer-like a single cell, the faster it will reproduce, which gives an evolutionary advantage to these cells) as the built-in safety mechanisms are destroyed. Actually developing cancer means that a large number of things have gone wrong.
Also, most of the body is something other than DNA. The chance for one single atom to decay in the right place and at the right time to actually damage DNA is very, very miniscule in the first place.
In fact, I think the Audi A2 would pretty much fulfill the criteria of this X-Prize already, or need very little modification to do so (its 80 mpg version didn't have AC, and unfortunately Audi stopped making it since it was simply too expensive (due to all the expensive materials used, e.g. Aluminum) for a "small car". The VW Lupo might fit the bill, too, but it was also discontinued.
The threat from mercury is 100% real. Don't believe me? Ask you baby's doctor how much tuna your baby can have.
Do you mean the mercury that might be released if you break a CFL, or the mercury that is released all the time by the coal-fired power plants that you need to power all of your indandescent bulbs ?
Oh, come on. My 2004 VW Touran 2.0 TDI goes from 0 to 60 in 10.3 seconds and easily goes 100 mph. And it gets 48 mpg on the highway (@75 mph, loaded with 2 adults, 2 kids and luggage) even when you do wasteful things like letting it idle for 10 minutes during a break on a rest stop. And it has lots of cargo space (or two extra seats and a little bit of cargo space), automatic transmission, AC and whatnot.
On the other hand, to win that prize I'd probably start with some of VWs newest gasoline engines (the 1.4 TSI) and design the car around that (maybe doing a hybrid, but definitely adding stuff like a transmission optimized for fuel economy and other such stuff).
What if it costs even one live ?
You're giving our earlier ancestors way, way, way too much credit. Ever wonder why the north coast of Africa is a desert and not a palm tree forest ? Ask the Romans.
The most money is to be made in genetically modifying crops to be highly tolerant to the herbi-/fungi-/insecticide made by your company. Bonus points (money) for making any seeds of this strain unable to germinate. (You mention the one company that does this in your posting, why don't you mention what exactly these guys do ?)
(And, sorry, but "resistant to drought" ? Plants need water just like any other higher life form on this planet. All the genetic engineering in the world won't magically make your plants grow without water.)
An AI that's prone to throwing tantrums. Just what we needed.
There's nothing to see here, move along. Just business as usual.
The exact design involves an inductor (coil) which is filled with an explosive. To generate the EMP, a high current is fed through the inductor (which stores quite a bit of energy), then the explosive charge is detonated and the energy stored in the inductor is released when it is blown up in the right way.
It's probably also quite deadly to any bystanders due to all the shrapnel from the coil.