RE: Tesla Model S: Review
Discussion
A Norwegian colleague told me " Plus you can drive in bus lane on highway and park free in public parking and drive free through the toll roads! " , certainly Oslo is full of them.
There was a very interesting article in EVO a couple of mths back where they drove one from Trondheim to Oslo, & courtesy of "superchargers", it sounded a painless, nay pleasurable experience.
Having seen a few of them up in Norway I think it is a lovely looking thing & I believe the price is fairly sane up there (well, as sane as any consumer goods in Norway ) due Govt Eco subsidies.
Free charging too. . . . . .
http://qz.com/133523/norwegians-are-now-paying-mor...
There was a very interesting article in EVO a couple of mths back where they drove one from Trondheim to Oslo, & courtesy of "superchargers", it sounded a painless, nay pleasurable experience.
Having seen a few of them up in Norway I think it is a lovely looking thing & I believe the price is fairly sane up there (well, as sane as any consumer goods in Norway ) due Govt Eco subsidies.
Free charging too. . . . . .
http://qz.com/133523/norwegians-are-now-paying-mor...
Edited by the other me on Wednesday 28th May 13:37
When combined with this http://elitedaily.com/news/technology/need-convinc... I think we are gonna be done with conventional cars sooner than we imagine. Enjoy now whilst you can ! ! Edited by the other me on Wednesday 28th May 13:40
the other me said:
I believe the price is fairly sane up there (well, as sane as any consumer goods in Norway ) due Govt Eco subsidies.
Evo suggested that due to taxation, it was comparable cost to a diesel golf.Dear Tesla. If these are 30K, I will buy one tomorrow. And if you're listening, any chance of an estate?
Its a nice car except for the IPAD thingy on the dashboard which looks ridiculous. Also, like a lot of high end cars your money starts to run away once you add the extras
I have been looking at these, still waiting for someone to contact me after a week, so their sales handling is not too good! In my case, the ONLY reason to get a car with any electric propulsion is to save the company car tax daylight robbery scam. This is where the Tesla, the Golf GTE, Audi A3 Etron (patiently waiting for these, fingers crossed for September)and the Mitsubishi PHEV et al will excel. I have my own cars but, I want a company car that I can pay very little tax on and with the aforementioned, you are looking at <100 per month BIK.
Roll on 5 years and it will be a different story, we will be queuing up for these cars...
I have been looking at these, still waiting for someone to contact me after a week, so their sales handling is not too good! In my case, the ONLY reason to get a car with any electric propulsion is to save the company car tax daylight robbery scam. This is where the Tesla, the Golf GTE, Audi A3 Etron (patiently waiting for these, fingers crossed for September)and the Mitsubishi PHEV et al will excel. I have my own cars but, I want a company car that I can pay very little tax on and with the aforementioned, you are looking at <100 per month BIK.
Roll on 5 years and it will be a different story, we will be queuing up for these cars...
Mr Will said:
Is it really that much worse than designing the infrastructure to transport thousands of gallons of highly flammable liquid to every corner of the country? Yes, it doesn't exist yet but I see no insurmountable problems there given enough time.
At the very simplest, liquid fuel needs a jerry can and a spout for refuelling any vehicle in a few short minutes in the middle of nowhere, as regularly demonstrated by anybody with a petrol lawnmower. Anything and everything above that is a refinement.How's that work with an electric car?
And, yes, having trucks restocking a pair of buried underground tanks and a number of relatively simple overground dispensing pumps really IS a LOT easier than building extra power stations connected to _huge_ electricity cables running to a massive array of underground conveyors, docking bays, auto-change equipment, safety interlocks, and global multi-manufacturer agreements on battery format...
The average supermarket in the UK sells 11.3m litres of fuel per year. 31,000 litres per day. About eight or nine tankers a week. Would we call an average of 40 litres per fill fair? That's 775 cars per day - and, clearly, they're not going to be evenly spread through the day. I'd suggest half of those were in one hour at the start of the working day, two hours at the end - and a big spike on a Saturday morning. Just think about the size of battery bank that'd need to be built, especially if larger cars and vans used two, three or four batteries each. And think about the power requirement to feed it all...
Great looking car and great concept for the 'established' car manufacturers to chew on.
However, you can forget these or any other EV in the UK any time soon - current estimates show that our (failing) electric infrastructure has around 3% excess capacity in the next 5 years with the closure of more and more power stations without any plans for new ones. What does that mean? Back to blackouts at peak elecy demand so adding EV's to the mix will only add to the problem.
With this in mind, we might need all the gasoline we need to light torches for night time riots....
However, you can forget these or any other EV in the UK any time soon - current estimates show that our (failing) electric infrastructure has around 3% excess capacity in the next 5 years with the closure of more and more power stations without any plans for new ones. What does that mean? Back to blackouts at peak elecy demand so adding EV's to the mix will only add to the problem.
With this in mind, we might need all the gasoline we need to light torches for night time riots....
MikeyBoy2000 said:
current estimates show that our (failing) electric infrastructure has around 3% excess capacity in the next 5 years
That is not true because you're missing the word "peak". If all private passenger miles were powered from the national grid (which will never happen) and the cars were all charged off-peak, it would use less than half the spare off-peak grid capacity. It wouldn't be especially hard to have car chargers shut off for the brief periods when the grid is over-loaded. If this was done, electric cars would have no effect on peak grid loads and hence no impact on capacity requirements. A smoother demand on the grid would also make it more commercially viable to build new power stations. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that car batteries could be used to ride over spikes in demand, effectively increasing the peak capacity of the grid when required (although it wouldn't be easy to organise).
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 28th May 14:54
MikeyBoy2000 said:
And of course, most of our electric power comes from coal...
Most is a bit of a stretch, the figure is nearer 30%. It’s a bit of an irrelevance anyway, even when the source of the electricity is taken into account electric cars are still cleaner per mile than an ICE equivalent, usually by a large margin. Given that the % of renewable is only going to increase, and that the night charging of electric cars will likely increase the efficiency of the grid as a whole the environmental benefit that EVs already have is only going to get larger.
A Scotsman said:
My son & his family live 620 miles away. I can normally make it there in 12-13hrs including fuel stops and a stop for lunch. In a Tesla I'd have to cut the journey in half and stay somewhere overnight. Do Tesla do hotel vouchers?
These sort of situations are currently not really practical but when the supercharger infrastructure is up and running that journey could be done with 2 half hour stops.TooMany2cvs said:
Mr Will said:
Is it really that much worse than designing the infrastructure to transport thousands of gallons of highly flammable liquid to every corner of the country? Yes, it doesn't exist yet but I see no insurmountable problems there given enough time.
At the very simplest, liquid fuel needs a jerry can and a spout for refuelling any vehicle in a few short minutes in the middle of nowhere, as regularly demonstrated by anybody with a petrol lawnmower. Anything and everything above that is a refinement.How's that work with an electric car?
And, yes, having trucks restocking a pair of buried underground tanks and a number of relatively simple overground dispensing pumps really IS a LOT easier than building extra power stations connected to _huge_ electricity cables running to a massive array of underground conveyors, docking bays, auto-change equipment, safety interlocks, and global multi-manufacturer agreements on battery format...
The average supermarket in the UK sells 11.3m litres of fuel per year. 31,000 litres per day. About eight or nine tankers a week. Would we call an average of 40 litres per fill fair? That's 775 cars per day - and, clearly, they're not going to be evenly spread through the day. I'd suggest half of those were in one hour at the start of the working day, two hours at the end - and a big spike on a Saturday morning. Just think about the size of battery bank that'd need to be built, especially if larger cars and vans used two, three or four batteries each. And think about the power requirement to feed it all...
Imagine the complexity if we tried to convert everything in our houses to run on petrol (or more realistically gas - like we used to).
A few extra wires and power stations is a lot simpler than huge floating rigs drilling deep in to the earth, moving the result half way around the world in mammoth ships to be refined then driving millions of litres of the finished product up and down the country to be stored in explosion-proof tanks and dispensing it with precisely calibrated pumps using vapour interlock systems and strict safety protocols to prevent explosions. All while ensuring that the precise mixture of hydrocarbons that reaches the end user is within acceptable tolerances of a standard and that the pumping equipment is compatible with each of the millions of cars on the road.
Just because we've already solved all these problems doesn't mean it was simple. I don't see how setting up an electrical infrastructure is any more complicated than what we've already achieved.
FWIW I do think that the battery swapping idea is likely to prove a dead-end. I think that fast charging has much more mileage (no pun intended). If people end up doing the majority of their charging at home overnight then that just leaves the occasional long journeys the exceed the cars range to deal with and these could be handled by a network of stations on motorways and major roads. Stop, plug your car in, have a coffee and a wee and by the time you are done the car is ready to go again. Charging points at supermarkets would be another good option for those without charging points at home - plug it in, do the weekly shop and it's charged by the time you've put your trolley back and retrieved your quid. Takes less time than detouring in to the petrol station on your way out. No fancy technology or massive storage space required.
garypotter said:
PS also with electric vehicles the manufacturers should state how long a full recharge takes and and what costs as I have to pay for my electricity.
Maybe they assume everyone has a plug in at work and work pays for it so it is really cheap to run! and very green!! look at the nuclear power stations to see how green electric cars are.
Also why not instal solar panels on the roof to charge the batteries even when they are moving - damn should have patented the stoopid idea.
simple math?Maybe they assume everyone has a plug in at work and work pays for it so it is really cheap to run! and very green!! look at the nuclear power stations to see how green electric cars are.
Also why not instal solar panels on the roof to charge the batteries even when they are moving - damn should have patented the stoopid idea.
garypotter said:
PS also with electric vehicles the manufacturers should state how long a full recharge takes and and what costs as I have to pay for my electricity.
Why on earth would they tell you how much a recharge costs? Traditional car manufacturers don't publish figures for how much it will cost to fill your car up with petrol for the simple reason that petrol prices vary from petrol station to petrol station and from area to area; electricity is no different, not everyone pays the same for it. On the other, I think they do state times for a full charge from various different types of charger, as well as various partial charge figures.
ETA: In fact they have a little calculator on their website which will work it all out for you: http://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/charging#/calcula...
For the best single-phase domestic installation, a full charge takes 14 and a half hours and costs about £14 at the price I pay for my electricity. If you're willing to install 3-phase, that drops to four and a half hours and about £13 (the charging seems to be slightly more efficient at higher rates). The slowest charger would take 28 hours but if you're intending to regularly use the majority of the car's range, I guess you don't use one of them.
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 28th May 17:28
It's probably an easier / safer solution building charging stations compared to petrol stations.
In theory a supermarket could have a point at every parking space. It's just a cable and a socket at the end of the day.
I could easily manage with a 300 mile range and only charging at home.
At the minute we would stop for at least 30 mins every 200 miles max on super long journeys just to let the kids stretch their legs so I don't see that as an issue either.
Contactless electrical transfer tech is getting better too - a motorway with Contactless charging strips could power the car on longer stretches, increasing the range? You could cover the central reservation in solar panels which would provide clean energy too
In theory a supermarket could have a point at every parking space. It's just a cable and a socket at the end of the day.
I could easily manage with a 300 mile range and only charging at home.
At the minute we would stop for at least 30 mins every 200 miles max on super long journeys just to let the kids stretch their legs so I don't see that as an issue either.
Contactless electrical transfer tech is getting better too - a motorway with Contactless charging strips could power the car on longer stretches, increasing the range? You could cover the central reservation in solar panels which would provide clean energy too
crossy67 said:
Holy s
t. I have it! The idea that's going to make EV's the answer. How's about a petrol generator in the boot.
Or a trailer:t. I have it! The idea that's going to make EV's the answer. How's about a petrol generator in the boot. http://www.technologicvehicles.com/en/green-transp...
Debaser said:
crossy67 said:
Holy st. I have it! The idea that's going to make EV's the answer. How's about a petrol generator in the boot.
Car companies have already thought of that one. Google REEV.t. I have it! The idea that's going to make EV's the answer. How's about a petrol generator in the boot. Mr Will said:
Flipping it the other way - at it's simplest electric charging requires a flexible bit of metal with some sort of plug on each end, as regularly demonstrated by anyone with a mobile phone.
Imagine the complexity if we tried to convert everything in our houses to run on petrol (or more realistically gas - like we used to).
You forget one small detail. At this very moment, 38% of everything electrical in the UK _IS_ running on gas - the single largest source of electricity in the UK (with coal second, with 28%)Imagine the complexity if we tried to convert everything in our houses to run on petrol (or more realistically gas - like we used to).
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Mr Will said:
A few extra wires and power stations is a lot simpler than huge floating rigs drilling deep in to the earth, moving the result half way around the world in mammoth ships to be refined
That's precisely what happens before it's turned into electricity. Electricity is just a way of moving the energy from A to B, and batteries are just a way of storing it temporarily. Whilst we use fossil fuel power stations, a Tesla in the UK is still munching those dead dinosaurs, which still have to be dug up, moved and fiddled with. All you're doing by burning them in big power stations and then sending sparkiness down bits of wire is _possibly_ burning them more efficiently, and with the emissions from them concentrated in a smaller number of locations.Mr Will said:
I don't see how setting up an electrical infrastructure is any more complicated than what we've already achieved.
Cool. You won't mind a big power station a few miles from your house, with a full-fat pylon at the end of your garden, then?Edited by TooMany2cvs on Wednesday 28th May 23:37
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