Tesla Master Plan part deux

[s1962a]

Having had an EV for a few years, and now got a PHEV, I aspire to get a Tesla Model S when I can afford it. If it suits your driving purpose (mine is driving into London every day) then they are amazing vehicles which are a lot of fun to drive. Total non fuss - just a motor and a battery at it's core and modern electrics to keep you comfortable. Compare that to the smoke-trikery and complexity in a modern combustion engine and you can see why EV's are the future as long as battery tech keeps innovating (become lighter with a longer range).

[TEKNOPUG]

s1962a said:

Having had an EV for a few years, and now got a PHEV, I aspire to get a Tesla Model S when I can afford it. If it suits your driving purpose (mine is driving into London every day) then they are amazing vehicles which are a lot of fun to drive. Total non fuss - just a motor and a battery at it's core and modern electrics to keep you comfortable. Compare that to the smoke-trikery and complexity in a modern combustion engine and you can see why EV's are the future as long as battery tech keeps innovating (become lighter with a longer range).

They are the future for a niche market. Short journey's, city driving, commercial driving (taxis, buses, city-couriers etc). The elephant in the room though is the electricity production required to switch 35m vehicles from combustion to battery. That's a long, long way off and is not even in the hands of Musk or any other of the EV companies. Then you look at the environmental benefits/impacts. Not burning fossil fuels is all well and good but you have find a way of producing electricity somehow. And the UK or even the whole of Europe switching to EV will have only a tiny impact whilst India, China and South America continue their rapid growth. Cadmium mines are hardly environmental and what to do with all the exhausted batteries?

Until we come up with clean, cheap, mass energy production, this all seems a lot like putting the cart before the horse. As I said earlier, Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

[FurtiveFreddy]

TEKNOPUG said:

Until we come up with clean, cheap, mass energy production, this all seems a lot like putting the cart before the horse. As I said earlier, Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

Whether you want to believe it or not, it sounds like you haven't actually read Master Plan 2...

[otolith]

TEKNOPUG said:

Cadmium mines are hardly environmental

Good job they moved from nickel/cadmium chemistry to lithium then.

TEKNOPUG said:

and what to do with all the exhausted batteries?

Recycle them for the minerals you would otherwise mine?

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/teslas-closed-loo...

[hornet]

How long until we see a shift from outright ownership to a "mileage as a service" model I wonder? Rather than buying the car, you buy miles on contract. The vehicles itself shifts from being the end product to simply a way of mediating other services. I believe Rolls Royce already operate that model on their aero engines, so it's not crazy to think motor manufacturers will adopt it. I actually wonder if we'll see mileage itself become a tradable commodity? You already have companies looking at using cryptographic tokens and smart contracts to build a distributed sharing economy, and I can see it happening to vehicles at some stage. No reason why you couldn't have a fleet of autonomous vehicles existing as distributed organisations on a blockchain and using smart contracts to negotiate for passengers or to carry deliveries. No idea when, but the genie is definitely out of the bottle. God alone knows what that'll do to the transportation industry. You already have automated ports run by a handful of people in a control room, so the implications for job losses and social change are massive.

[AW111]

All the fuss about "the UK grid can't support mass EV's" is a bit short-sighted.

It may be a problem for the UK, but thats a small fraction of the global car market. If Tesla can crack the US / China market, why should Musk care about the UK and it's creaking infrastructure?

[wc98]

hornet said:

You already have automated ports run by a handful of people in a control room, so the implications for job losses and social change are massive.

maybe the two go hand in hand. with the amount of automation and reduction in need for things like car repairs mentioned in this plan there will be a lot more people unable to afford vehicle ownership.

[98elise]

TEKNOPUG said:

s1962a said:

Having had an EV for a few years, and now got a PHEV, I aspire to get a Tesla Model S when I can afford it. If it suits your driving purpose (mine is driving into London every day) then they are amazing vehicles which are a lot of fun to drive. Total non fuss - just a motor and a battery at it's core and modern electrics to keep you comfortable. Compare that to the smoke-trikery and complexity in a modern combustion engine and you can see why EV's are the future as long as battery tech keeps innovating (become lighter with a longer range).

They are the future for a niche market. Short journey's, city driving, commercial driving (taxis, buses, city-couriers etc). The elephant in the room though is the electricity production required to switch 35m vehicles from combustion to battery. That's a long, long way off and is not even in the hands of Musk or any other of the EV companies. Then you look at the environmental benefits/impacts. Not burning fossil fuels is all well and good but you have find a way of producing electricity somehow. And the UK or even the whole of Europe switching to EV will have only a tiny impact whilst India, China and South America continue their rapid growth. Cadmium mines are hardly environmental and what to do with all the exhausted batteries?

Until we come up with clean, cheap, mass energy production, this all seems a lot like putting the cart before the horse. As I said earlier, Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

It is perfectly feasable to run an EV from a domestic solar PV system. In addition the electrical energy cosumed in producing a gallon of fuel is about 7kWh, which will shift an EV about 20-25 miles. also we have plenty of spare energy capacity at night, when most people will charge.

[TEKNOPUG]

FurtiveFreddy said:

TEKNOPUG said:

Until we come up with clean, cheap, mass energy production, this all seems a lot like putting the cart before the horse. As I said earlier, Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

Whether you want to believe it or not, it sounds like you haven't actually read Master Plan 2...

Solar power apparently. Why not stick a wind turbine on top too, for those overcast days. And of course ensure that you vehicle is always parked outside.

[TEKNOPUG]

otolith said:

TEKNOPUG said:

Cadmium mines are hardly environmental

Good job they moved from nickel/cadmium chemistry to lithium then.

TEKNOPUG said:

and what to do with all the exhausted batteries?

Recycle them for the minerals you would otherwise mine?

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/teslas-closed-loo...

The world is saved.

[anonymous-user]

TEKNOPUG said:

...Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

I suspect he would argue they already have. It's big and orange and where he lives you just have to look up to see it.

[TEKNOPUG]

98elise said:

TEKNOPUG said:

s1962a said:

Having had an EV for a few years, and now got a PHEV, I aspire to get a Tesla Model S when I can afford it. If it suits your driving purpose (mine is driving into London every day) then they are amazing vehicles which are a lot of fun to drive. Total non fuss - just a motor and a battery at it's core and modern electrics to keep you comfortable. Compare that to the smoke-trikery and complexity in a modern combustion engine and you can see why EV's are the future as long as battery tech keeps innovating (become lighter with a longer range).

They are the future for a niche market. Short journey's, city driving, commercial driving (taxis, buses, city-couriers etc). The elephant in the room though is the electricity production required to switch 35m vehicles from combustion to battery. That's a long, long way off and is not even in the hands of Musk or any other of the EV companies. Then you look at the environmental benefits/impacts. Not burning fossil fuels is all well and good but you have find a way of producing electricity somehow. And the UK or even the whole of Europe switching to EV will have only a tiny impact whilst India, China and South America continue their rapid growth. Cadmium mines are hardly environmental and what to do with all the exhausted batteries?

Until we come up with clean, cheap, mass energy production, this all seems a lot like putting the cart before the horse. As I said earlier, Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

It is perfectly feasable to run an EV from a domestic solar PV system. In addition the electrical energy cosumed in producing a gallon of fuel is about 7kWh, which will shift an EV about 20-25 miles. also we have plenty of spare energy capacity at night, when most people will charge.

What has the energy consumption of petrol refinery got to do with anything? Are we going to burn oil to produce electricity to run cars? Are there going to be tankers from the middle east, transporting electricity all around the world?

Do we have plenty of spare capacity or sufficient spare capacity? And is the 5% of total tax receipts that fuel duty represents, going to be recouped by increasing the price of electricity?

[TEKNOPUG]

fblm said:

TEKNOPUG said:

...Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

I suspect he would argue they already have. It's big and orange and where he lives you just have to look up to see it.

I don't know we he lives but I certainly can't see it 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

[JD]

TEKNOPUG said:

What has the energy consumption of petrol refinery got to do with anything?

Not sure if serious?

If you don’t need the petrol to burn in a car, then you don’t need to use the energy to refine it in the first place.

[anonymous-user]

TEKNOPUG said:

They are the future for a niche market.

Like computers? Have you driven a Tesla S? EV's are the future, absolutely no doubt IMO.

[ikarl]

TEKNOPUG said:

fblm said:

TEKNOPUG said:

...Musk would be better off concentrating all his business talent and resources at cracking nuclear fusion first.

I suspect he would argue they already have. It's big and orange and where he lives you just have to look up to see it.

I don't know we he lives but I certainly can't see it 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

Is replying to this thread not becoming a bit tedious yet?

(reading your replies certainly is)

[TEKNOPUG]

JD said:

TEKNOPUG said:

What has the energy consumption of petrol refinery got to do with anything?

Not sure if serious?

If you don’t need the petrol to burn in a car, then you don’t need to use the energy to refine it in the first place.

Oil refineries produce their own electricity by burning by-products of the refining process. Spare electricity goes to the grid. So how does that help anyone? Rather than use that electricity to refine oil, you just send the electricity to the grid? So just burn oil to generate electricity to power cars? That's genius...

Providing of course that every country has enough oil refineries to turn into oil power stations to generate sufficient electricity to power all their electric vehicles.

[TEKNOPUG]

fblm said:

TEKNOPUG said:

They are the future for a niche market.

Like computers? Have you driven a Tesla S? EV's are the future, absolutely no doubt IMO.

Yes I have and what a very clever piece of technology it is. It's still niche though until we come up with sufficient clean, cheap and reliable electricity generation in which to move from a oil-based transport society to an EV one.

[TEKNOPUG]

ikarl said:

Is replying to this thread not becoming a bit tedious yet?

(reading your replies certainly is)

I'm not sure how you can have a discussion about EV's being the future of transportation without considering the implications of the energy requirements. Others seem to think otherwise.

[menguin]

TEKNOPUG said:

I don't know we he lives but I certainly can't see it 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

Luckily around 150 years ago someone created something called a "battery". It stores energy - so the sun doesn't need to be there 24 hours a day.