Karl on Cars

tiruvan
 
On your option #1. Why do you say "never pay anything again"?
 
You still have to pay for the power the Tesla uses.

Tesal had such a good thing going. O well, all good things must come to an end.

Hummm... A company making an "ethical" sports car. They haven't made any cars, they have taken money from people, the company is jettisoning executives daily.
 
If you know what I'm refering to you won't need to follow the Tesla story much longer.
 
Wheres the DEA coke bust?

Firstwagon:
 
I agree ... we have to pay for power later on. I was just making the best case assumption and show that it will still fail under common sense.

Although anything faster than 6 s for 0 to 60 mph is very fast, the 5.7 s time for this car is very disappointing and has dampened my enthusiasm.

firstwagon, tiruvan,
 
You never have to pay to power the Tesla if you've got a solar+wind farm out on the back forty.

LOL... next time you find someone giving away a solar or wind farm, let me know.
 
Seriously though, I am curious as to how much operating a car like this would increase your electricity bill on a monthly basis.
 
Anyone know how much current the charger draws and how long they take to charge?

"...how much operating a car like this would increase your electricity bill on a monthly basis. "
 
Based on the number of cars they've delivered, nothing.
 
These guys should be running for president. They don't promise change they deliver: range changed, acceleraton changed, cost changed. And it's less performance, and higher cost - just like a politician.
 
If GM does this with the Volt......

"Based on the number of cars they've delivered, nothing"
 
That's precisely true. Nothing. No Telsa roadsters have been delivered. One can't determine the cost of ownership until one owns the product in question. Let's wait until March 17th (or later) to see how it pans out.

mnorm1,
"...how much operating a car like this would increase your electricity bill on a monthly basis. "
It all dedends on what year you are asking about prices. Present day prices or the bloated 500% KWH price increase we will be paying if 10% or 20% of our cars are electric.
For all you enviromentalist that think electric cars are going to save the world here are some numbers to think about. The average coal power plant puts out about as much CO2 as 660,000 cars(4 million us tons), and China right now is averaging one new coal plant a week. At 50 new coal plants this year China will have added 33 million cars worth of CO2. Not to mention the 454 coal plants that the US also have. Countries don't build natural gas power plants because there is only 60 to 70 years worth of NG underground. I might be dead and gone, but my children are going to live long enough to see humans run out of NG.

"The average coal power plant puts out about as much CO2 as 660,000 cars(4 million us tons)"
 
Ah, yes, but cars aren't the only source of emission for gasoline. Don't forget that it takes energy to pump oil out of the ground, transport it, refine it, and then deliver it to your gas station. The true environmental cost of gasoline is much higher than the CO2 and CO that come out of car tailpipes.
 
(PS: Not saying that electricity is the answer -- just that we need to be careful and compare apples to apples.)

We need to look at the trade off very carefully. Building more power plants is not the answer. If we use electric cars now we are addicted to domestic coal and chinese lithium. Lithium is top of the line technology when it comes to batteries and almost every ounce of it is mined in China. Which makes any kind of battery dependence insane!!!!! Electric cars are at best a feel good half measure. If you are a typical enviromentalist who doesn't believe five adult humans exhale as much CO2 as an average gas sedan then go buy this car.

Electric cars will be the solution of the future, just not the present. The technology to create that much electricity cleanly doesn't exist yet.
 
Pure electric cars will remain rare or golf carts for now. Plug in hybrid will be the next wave as they offer the best of both worlds.
 
In the short term it will be a combination of solutions.

I think Tesla is doomed because they are already using some outdated technology. Tesla didn't think "outside the box" enough. State of art in ev propulsion is using ac motors that are built into the hub. You have a motor inside each wheel hub eliminating the need for a transmission. It also makes the car lighter because there is no mechanical breaking system. All the stopping is done by the motor itself. Lightning Car Company is going to produce a ev using in hub motors. 0-60 in under 4 seconds, and a top speed of around 160 mph.
Heres a link to the motor manufacturer.
http://www.pmlflightlink.com/motors/hipa_drive.html
 
I did some homework on building an ev, and the transmission is a big deal killer on using a conventional setup. I searched the web up and down looking for a 2 speed ev tranny , and bottom line they don't exist. There isn't a very good compromise gear ratio for a one speed tranny either. With a single speed tranny either pickup or top end is sacrificed.
 
I'm very suprised that with all Tesla's recources they could not come up with a 2 gear set up. It's bad news when a company with as much backing as Tesla can't come up with a 2 speed that lasts. In the very least it pretty much kills the one central motor approach for a sports car based ev. Any kind of one speed setup is going to have a slow 0-60 if you want to cross that 120 mph barrier.

chevy598, you raise an interesting point. It seems people forget where electricity comes from. But the good thing about electric cars is that they're more efficient. For example, fuel-cell systems are about 50% efficient and a real electric car like the Tesla should exceed 80% in efficiency. On the other hand, a petrol engine is less than 30% efficient and a diesel engine is less than 40% efficient. (Karl, am I right?)

blackadder5639,
i agree, the efficiency of electric motors makes them attractive. Which is one of the reasons me and a friend looked into turning a chevy s10 into an EV. I'm not knocking EV's as a way to reduce our nations dependence to oil. It's just not going to do a damn thing to help the enviroment. EV's are great for getting us off oil they just have no value when it comes to saving the enviroment.

chevy598,
 
Electric cars will save energy because they are more efficient. And they will have no emissions, so there will be no CO2 and pollutant emissions.
You're right that they won't reduce emissions/pollution by power plants (in fact, they'll increase it)...but as more environmentally-friendly means of electricity production are developed, power plants will eventually become cleaner.
 
My main worries about electric cars are the strain they'll put on the grid, and their longevity. (I doubt electric cars can last 200k miles.) And the nation could be at a virtual standstill if there is a power cut that lasts more than a day.
 
You mean one car emits as much CO2 as 5 people? If so, then why is there noise about automobile CO2 emissions?

blackadder,
When is this clean form of electricity going to be developed? Cold fusion is just a pipe dream until some scientist can make it happen, and the US has already made up its mind about nuclear. People are not willing to live with meltdowns even if they are extremly rare. Solar/wind power are just toys for the rich to feel good about themselves. The biggest wind farms couldn't power even a small city.
 
7driver,
"You never have to pay to power the Tesla if you've got a solar+wind farm out on the back forty."
You would ruin 40 acres of land so you can drive a zero emissions car and not have a light bill?. That sounds like a Typical enviromentalist to me. 40 acres of wind mills and solar panels to power each house in america doesn't sound like progress to me.

Fusion power is still a pipe dream in the US, but not in the rest of the world. The solution to workable fusion energy is Helium3. Most scientists in the know say that if we had a workable supply of He3 today that we would have fusion power within five years. Where is He3? In the lunar regolith. In basically unlimited supplies. Made by the sun, eternally being produced. This is why China, Japan, the EU, and India are so gung ho about going to the moon. But we here in the US are stuck with possibly the worst government this country has had since the articles of confederation, and none of the current crop of presidential candidates care about anything except their own private power agendas.
 
Now back to the Tesla: Still vaporware.
 
If I were a betting person I would put money on the Tesla still being vaporware on March 18.

chevy598,
  
Practical application of electric power for vehicles is going to depend heavily on individual circumstances. As I understand it, there are currently substantial cheap power reserves in the grid in the small hours of the morning, since electricity demand varies significantly each day (generally peaking in the late afternoon on hot days when AC units are working the hardest) and power plants can't simply be turned off for several hours each night when demand is the lowest. Therefore, if people are charging EVs overnight with some sort of timer to only draw power from the grid during certain hours, any net increase in emissions is negligible, at least until EVs make sufficient market inroads to use all the currently unutilized power.
  
On solar and wind out in the back 40, that's not quite accurate. A typical residential grid-tie photovoltaic system is going to be around 100 s.f. per kW, with a typical system 200 to 300 s.f. in size, which is small enough to be mounted on a residential rooftop without requiring any additional land. I'm not as familiar with wind power, but I know that it's more suitable for some areas of the country than solar is, and that the small residential windmill market is expanding.
  
Getting back to the Tesla, I think they may have bitten off more than they can chew. I think the initial offering will only work for certain segments of the population (wealthy green urban dwellers), but the real value will be if the Tesla acts as a springboard to other EV technologies and products. That said, I'm not holding my breath, and expect that plug-in hybrids from established manufacturers will probably be the most cost effective green transportation solution of choice for the next decade.
  
For those who aren't aware, California's AB 32 law is going to mandate large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Whether you think that global warming is caused by man or not, this is now the law in California, and it'll need to be complied with somehow. Some sort of greater regulation of conventional motor vehicles WILL be forthcoming in the next few years as part of that emission reduction strategy, since CARB is the lead agency for implementing AB 32.