"this would force the automaker out of about 1/3 of the U.S. by population."
More like 1/8th. There are a lot of people in California, but they only add up to 37 million plus no small number of illegals who are not to be found when the census folks drop by. Still 37,000,00 is more than the population of Canada or Australia, and few auto mongers want to be locked out of that market.
"Maybe they need to be towed from the ramp to the runway, by electric tugs"... or sails. imagine the photo impact of a big passenger jet being hauled toward a distant runway entrance by a ballooning spinnaker.
I dunno. I used to use arguments similar to yours about the dangers of Hydrogen as a fuel. Then someone pointed out to me (correctly. I checked) that "Town Gas" -- a noxious mixture of gases generated from coal -- which was widely used prior to the widespread availability of Natural Gas -- was often half or more Hydrogen and it was really no more catastrophe-prone in practice than NG.
While the Hindenburg and some of its competitors didn't work out so well, the Graf Zeppelin made a round the world flight, then was successfully used for transatlantic commercial flights for several years. What ended its career was World War II, not poor economics or poor performance.
Whether a modern zeppelin could compete for passenger traffic is dubious. Lighter than air vehicles are never likely to be very fast.
OTOH, perhaps they'd be competitive for hauling freight from East Asia to the world's consumers.
"They've already had to deal with this very problem before."
Ahem, no. Keep the charge time the same and multiply the amount of power by 10 or 20. They've had to deal with maybe 5-10% of the problem. Maybe their previous solutions scale. Maybe they don't.
Been wondering about those cables myself. I've actually moved, connected, and disconnected some high power cables at times. A fair task for an adult male. Muskmobile cables carrying ten times the power are likely to be a challenge to deal with.
Boeing's first commercial jetliner was the 707 which first flew at the end of 1957. However, the first commercial jet was the deHavilland Comet which first flew almost a decade before the 707. Unfortunately, the Comet had a few minor design flaws which resulted in it tending to come apart in flight resulting in a bit of negative publicity. It was extensively redesigned. Some of the redesigned aircraft were in service until very recently. The original Comet didn't carry a lot of passengers -- about 40 and had a fairly limited range> But as you say, its speed and maximum altitude weren't too different from modern passenger aircraft.
Nothing against EVs, but there's a lot of hyperbole out there. For a realistic appraisal of EV capability, let me recommend this article by UCSD physics professor Tom Murphy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/201... This is based on his persanal EV.
Murphy's conclusion
"I am not yet personally convinced that we will see an EV revolution. Gasoline price fluctuations are a short-term killer of long-term planning. Batteries still do, and likely always will, disappoint. I am learning similar lessons on the nickel-iron battery front. We may have to face the fact that gasoline has been the ultimate transportation fuel, and the economists’ picture of universal substitutability may not apply."
That said. Batteries suck, but they are improving -- albeit rather slowly.. If you believe Murphy (and i do), EVs are sort of OK today in a warm climate (Murphy lives in San Diego). My guess is there are applications -- and trucking might be one of them -- where EVs are competetive with/superior to fossil fuel vehicles and others where they aren't. My guess is that there are a few applications, fire engine's, jet aircraft,... where the high energy density of hydrocarbon fuel will always be superior to electricity.
I suspect that Megacharger is going to be massive and expensive. And that the power cables are going to be impressive and kind of scary. They likely aren't going to want to move the charger around their facility or wrestle with the power cables.
My guess is that they'll cycle their electric tractors through their charger(s) on a schedule. The charged tractors will pick up the loaded trailer(s) after charging.is completed.
But there are lots of other possibilities. They'll presumably do whatever makes sense.
Seems to me like Tesla's truck is a perfectly reasonable vehicle. At least on paper. It's surely targeted at fleet operators like Trashmart and J B Hunt who will presumably use it on fixed routes with their own charging stations at their depots. If it works out and their bean counters decide that it saves money, they will buy more and expand their charger network. If it doesn't save money or has other serious problems such as problems in snow and ice, they won't buy any more of them.
Note that Tesla's autopilot looks to be far better suited to freeways than random surface streets. It might even work and be safe. I would think that these trucks will be used mostly on freeways so there is the possibility that eventually -- after a few tens of millions of safe miles -- they might be allowed to drop off their driver at the freeway on-ramp and pick up a new driver at the destination off ramp.
"the box will broadcast back over the air on channel 40.X, owned by the transmitting channel and sublicensed to you for that purpose."
I don't think so. At least not that way. Problem is that your TV station jams maybe 100KW into its antenna in order to get a usable signal to all it's potential listeners. Near the transmitter, the listeners can get by with a random length of wire antenna, but further out, they will need a directional antenna to get a weak signal with an adequate signal to noise ratio. Problem is that the reverse path doesn't work without a good deal of power at the user's end. Furthermore, the result of all the listeners trying to talk at once would be an incredible mess at the station receiving antenna.
The station would need for the listeners to use some form of time and or frequency division multiplexing in order to sort things out. How do they coordinate that?
More likely, the back link, if any, will probably have to be cellular or internet. And given the dismal state of internet in rural America, the backlink is not going to have a whole lot of bandwidth. (Not everybody has cell coverage either).
"I don't even watch local TV because it's also garbage."
Yep, but it's "free" garbage. We fired Comcast last Winter after a snowplow took out our distribution box and we found it pretty much impossible to report the outage. After a few months of investigating the potential of Netflix, Sling, etc we find that we're watching MORE programming on local TV than we expected. The big problem is that the great leap forward to digital TV has left us with very few reliable OTA channels. Six of the eight local broadcasters simply can't deliver enough signal for even an amplified indoor antenna. So Sunday, I'm going to tackle the job of reinstalling the amplifiers and wiring for our abandonded whole house TV network and outdoor antenna.
"There's got to be a way to poison the data that the advertisers hope to reap from this technology."
There probably will be some sort of equivalent to Internet Browser adblocking. But the data they are getting probably isn't very useful anyway. It tells them that their ads are being displayed. But they already know that. Unless the ads are funny or otherwise interesting somehow, 90% of the viewers tune the ads out anyway. And even if the ads are attention getting, my guess is that almost all viewers ignore them after a few reps.
I'm also skeptical that the backchannel -- TV set to advertiser -- can have enough bandwidth to do much actual damage. For programming streamed over the internet, the "broadcaster" already knows which TVs are watching what. For Over The Air, any practical backlink is either going to need an internet/cell connection -- dog slow to nonexistent in many parts of rural America.
Not that "they" won't manage to make a thorough botch of this. Bungling broadcasting has become pretty much an American tradition.
And think of the jobs that will be created by replacing every TV set in America (again). Of course almost all those jobs except some sales and installation jobs will be in East Asia.
You win some, you lose some.
But that's the price of progress, right. Where is it that we are "progressing" to?
Read the Article? This is Slashdot man. You get folks to actually read articles before posting and God knows what will befall us.
There's a chance that changing the conduct of Slashdot readers might set into motion a sequence of events that might require Slashdot editors to find real work. Do you really want to be responsible for loosing them on an ill prepared universe?
"The median range for electric cars these days is just short of a single tank of gas, around 380km."
Ahem... A typical North American sedan will have a practical range of about 300-400 miles on a tank of gas -- that's 480-645km. Of course, some folks prefer absurd vehicles with worse mileage. But I assume they have larger fuel tanks to compensate.
I also don't believe for a second that the median range of current EVs is 380km although I'm sure that a few can manage that on a nice Spring day starting with 100% charge on a reasonably new battery pack.
Well, Tesla **IS** paying for this, albeit using borrowed OPM ("Other People's Money" for those not familiar with Anglo-Americanisms). If you are arguing that Electric Vehicle's don't deserve a public subsidy, you may have a point although under current law, Tesla's Federal subsidy is going to go away soon anyway. And I suppose that Tesla has the same right as any other private company to squander its investors'/lenders' money.
If you are arguing that EVs are kind of dumb if your plans include long distance driving, you probably have a point although I must say that compared to cryptocurrencies, the assembly of massive dossiers on the private actions of computer users, America's failure to control firearms, and the lunacies of the far right and left in America, Tesla''s operations seem almost rational.
On top of which, according to Wikipedia, the AVERAGE July high temperature in Kettleman City is 99F(37C). Trust me on this folks, 30 minutes is about 27 minutes longer than any sensible person is going to want to spend in that garden spot looking at a vista of dirt and long dead grass on a toasty Summer afternoon. (It's nice around there in February in wet years though).
OTOH, 30 minutes is a lot better than 40 hours or so trying to top up the charge from a typical 15 amp 117 volt connection in a local motel.
The biggest problem I've seen is that gizmos that might actually be good for something generally have user interfaces that are horrible beyond belief. The multitude of simple mechanical devices in a modern household -- can openers, thermostats, light switches, etc have evolved over decades or centuries into simple forms that are comprehensible and easy to use. Their digital replacements often are strange beyond belief.
"Why do I need my toaster to tweet at my lightbulbs or the ability to look at my thermostat via a security camera over the internet, and then change the temperature setting by posting to instagram?"
I'm sure Alexa can explain that to you if you just ask.
I've been told that after years of practice and exercise, certain monks can develop the discipline to type their occasional weight measurements directly into a spreadsheet.
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Given the mass of the average American, ejecting them downward with sufficient force should allow for a significant altitude gain.
"this would force the automaker out of about 1/3 of the U.S. by population."
More like 1/8th. There are a lot of people in California, but they only add up to 37 million plus no small number of illegals who are not to be found when the census folks drop by. Still 37,000,00 is more than the population of Canada or Australia, and few auto mongers want to be locked out of that market.
"Maybe they need to be towed from the ramp to the runway, by electric tugs" ... or sails. imagine the photo impact of a big passenger jet being hauled toward a distant runway entrance by a ballooning spinnaker.
I dunno. I used to use arguments similar to yours about the dangers of Hydrogen as a fuel. Then someone pointed out to me (correctly. I checked) that "Town Gas" -- a noxious mixture of gases generated from coal -- which was widely used prior to the widespread availability of Natural Gas -- was often half or more Hydrogen and it was really no more catastrophe-prone in practice than NG.
While the Hindenburg and some of its competitors didn't work out so well, the Graf Zeppelin made a round the world flight, then was successfully used for transatlantic commercial flights for several years. What ended its career was World War II, not poor economics or poor performance.
Whether a modern zeppelin could compete for passenger traffic is dubious. Lighter than air vehicles are never likely to be very fast.
OTOH, perhaps they'd be competitive for hauling freight from East Asia to the world's consumers.
"They've already had to deal with this very problem before."
Ahem, no. Keep the charge time the same and multiply the amount of power by 10 or 20. They've had to deal with maybe 5-10% of the problem. Maybe their previous solutions scale. Maybe they don't.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Free (very) hot showers for the drivers!!!
Been wondering about those cables myself. I've actually moved, connected, and disconnected some high power cables at times. A fair task for an adult male. Muskmobile cables carrying ten times the power are likely to be a challenge to deal with.
Boeing's first commercial jetliner was the 707 which first flew at the end of 1957. However, the first commercial jet was the deHavilland Comet which first flew almost a decade before the 707. Unfortunately, the Comet had a few minor design flaws which resulted in it tending to come apart in flight resulting in a bit of negative publicity. It was extensively redesigned. Some of the redesigned aircraft were in service until very recently. The original Comet didn't carry a lot of passengers -- about 40 and had a fairly limited range> But as you say, its speed and maximum altitude weren't too different from modern passenger aircraft.
You mean Elon isn't going to take me to Mars for $199.98?
I am shocked ... shocked ...
Nothing against EVs, but there's a lot of hyperbole out there. For a realistic appraisal of EV capability, let me recommend this article by UCSD physics professor Tom Murphy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/201... This is based on his persanal EV.
Murphy's conclusion
"I am not yet personally convinced that we will see an EV revolution. Gasoline price fluctuations are a short-term killer of long-term planning. Batteries still do, and likely always will, disappoint. I am learning similar lessons on the nickel-iron battery front. We may have to face the fact that gasoline has been the ultimate transportation fuel, and the economists’ picture of universal substitutability may not apply."
That said. Batteries suck, but they are improving -- albeit rather slowly.. If you believe Murphy (and i do), EVs are sort of OK today in a warm climate (Murphy lives in San Diego). My guess is there are applications -- and trucking might be one of them -- where EVs are competetive with/superior to fossil fuel vehicles and others where they aren't. My guess is that there are a few applications, fire engine's, jet aircraft, ... where the high energy density of hydrocarbon fuel will always be superior to electricity.
I suspect that Megacharger is going to be massive and expensive. And that the power cables are going to be impressive and kind of scary. They likely aren't going to want to move the charger around their facility or wrestle with the power cables.
My guess is that they'll cycle their electric tractors through their charger(s) on a schedule. The charged tractors will pick up the loaded trailer(s) after charging.is completed.
But there are lots of other possibilities. They'll presumably do whatever makes sense.
And curling!!! In Canada, you can watch curling on TV!!!
Seems to me like Tesla's truck is a perfectly reasonable vehicle. At least on paper. It's surely targeted at fleet operators like Trashmart and J B Hunt who will presumably use it on fixed routes with their own charging stations at their depots. If it works out and their bean counters decide that it saves money, they will buy more and expand their charger network. If it doesn't save money or has other serious problems such as problems in snow and ice, they won't buy any more of them.
Note that Tesla's autopilot looks to be far better suited to freeways than random surface streets. It might even work and be safe. I would think that these trucks will be used mostly on freeways so there is the possibility that eventually -- after a few tens of millions of safe miles -- they might be allowed to drop off their driver at the freeway on-ramp and pick up a new driver at the destination off ramp.
"the box will broadcast back over the air on channel 40.X, owned by the transmitting channel and sublicensed to you for that purpose."
I don't think so. At least not that way. Problem is that your TV station jams maybe 100KW into its antenna in order to get a usable signal to all it's potential listeners. Near the transmitter, the listeners can get by with a random length of wire antenna, but further out, they will need a directional antenna to get a weak signal with an adequate signal to noise ratio. Problem is that the reverse path doesn't work without a good deal of power at the user's end. Furthermore, the result of all the listeners trying to talk at once would be an incredible mess at the station receiving antenna.
The station would need for the listeners to use some form of time and or frequency division multiplexing in order to sort things out. How do they coordinate that?
More likely, the back link, if any, will probably have to be cellular or internet. And given the dismal state of internet in rural America, the backlink is not going to have a whole lot of bandwidth. (Not everybody has cell coverage either).
"I don't even watch local TV because it's also garbage."
Yep, but it's "free" garbage. We fired Comcast last Winter after a snowplow took out our distribution box and we found it pretty much impossible to report the outage. After a few months of investigating the potential of Netflix, Sling, etc we find that we're watching MORE programming on local TV than we expected. The big problem is that the great leap forward to digital TV has left us with very few reliable OTA channels. Six of the eight local broadcasters simply can't deliver enough signal for even an amplified indoor antenna. So Sunday, I'm going to tackle the job of reinstalling the amplifiers and wiring for our abandonded whole house TV network and outdoor antenna.
"There's got to be a way to poison the data that the advertisers hope to reap from this technology."
There probably will be some sort of equivalent to Internet Browser adblocking. But the data they are getting probably isn't very useful anyway. It tells them that their ads are being displayed. But they already know that. Unless the ads are funny or otherwise interesting somehow, 90% of the viewers tune the ads out anyway. And even if the ads are attention getting, my guess is that almost all viewers ignore them after a few reps.
I'm also skeptical that the backchannel -- TV set to advertiser -- can have enough bandwidth to do much actual damage. For programming streamed over the internet, the "broadcaster" already knows which TVs are watching what. For Over The Air, any practical backlink is either going to need an internet/cell connection -- dog slow to nonexistent in many parts of rural America.
Not that "they" won't manage to make a thorough botch of this. Bungling broadcasting has become pretty much an American tradition.
And think of the jobs that will be created by replacing every TV set in America (again). Of course almost all those jobs except some sales and installation jobs will be in East Asia.
You win some, you lose some.
But that's the price of progress, right. Where is it that we are "progressing" to?
Read the Article? This is Slashdot man. You get folks to actually read articles before posting and God knows what will befall us.
There's a chance that changing the conduct of Slashdot readers might set into motion a sequence of events that might require Slashdot editors to find real work. Do you really want to be responsible for loosing them on an ill prepared universe?
"The median range for electric cars these days is just short of a single tank of gas, around 380km."
Ahem ... A typical North American sedan will have a practical range of about 300-400 miles on a tank of gas -- that's 480-645km. Of course, some folks prefer absurd vehicles with worse mileage. But I assume they have larger fuel tanks to compensate.
I also don't believe for a second that the median range of current EVs is 380km although I'm sure that a few can manage that on a nice Spring day starting with 100% charge on a reasonably new battery pack.
Well, Tesla **IS** paying for this, albeit using borrowed OPM ("Other People's Money" for those not familiar with Anglo-Americanisms). If you are arguing that Electric Vehicle's don't deserve a public subsidy, you may have a point although under current law, Tesla's Federal subsidy is going to go away soon anyway. And I suppose that Tesla has the same right as any other private company to squander its investors'/lenders' money.
If you are arguing that EVs are kind of dumb if your plans include long distance driving, you probably have a point although I must say that compared to cryptocurrencies, the assembly of massive dossiers on the private actions of computer users, America's failure to control firearms, and the lunacies of the far right and left in America, Tesla''s operations seem almost rational.
On top of which, according to Wikipedia, the AVERAGE July high temperature in Kettleman City is 99F(37C). Trust me on this folks, 30 minutes is about 27 minutes longer than any sensible person is going to want to spend in that garden spot looking at a vista of dirt and long dead grass on a toasty Summer afternoon. (It's nice around there in February in wet years though).
OTOH, 30 minutes is a lot better than 40 hours or so trying to top up the charge from a typical 15 amp 117 volt connection in a local motel.
The biggest problem I've seen is that gizmos that might actually be good for something generally have user interfaces that are horrible beyond belief. The multitude of simple mechanical devices in a modern household -- can openers, thermostats, light switches, etc have evolved over decades or centuries into simple forms that are comprehensible and easy to use. Their digital replacements often are strange beyond belief.
"Why do I need my toaster to tweet at my lightbulbs or the ability to look at my thermostat via a security camera over the internet, and then change the temperature setting by posting to instagram?"
I'm sure Alexa can explain that to you if you just ask.
I've been told that after years of practice and exercise, certain monks can develop the discipline to type their occasional weight measurements directly into a spreadsheet.
Not practical for normal human beings of course.