Tesla Model 3 revealed

[98elise]

Blaster72 said:

98elise said:

Could you put some figures to all this scaling thats needed.

An average driver needs about 7kWh per day, and producing a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy before you even move a single mile.

Not heard the 6kWh for petrol before - is that per litre, per barrel of oil, per mile - what exactly??

As for some EV power calcs Sure, no problem. My maths might be slightly dodgy but going on Tesla Model S consumption and the Uk average mileage of 8000 miles per year consumption is 7.6kWh per day per car.

Lets say we go head first into it an decide on all EV as the future, by 2020 it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect 30% of cars sold to be EV.

That's 780,000 new EV's (going on 2015 sales of 2.6 million cars).

That's 5,928,000 kWh per day of charging going on day in day out just for the EV sales that year, if sales stayed static another 780,000 EV's would be added to this each year until say 10 years later you have 7,800,000 EV's on the roads.

That's still only 22% of cars on the roads by 2030 being EV's.

By then they would be consuming 5,928,000,000 kWh per day - I'm assuming this would need extra power infrastructure and production to cope with?? (Is that 5,928 Megawatt hours? - if so that's more than even Drax power station produces, doesn't seem right at all as I thought it'd be less)

I'll admit, these figures sound completely barmy but having seen the rise of the diesel over petrol then it's not completely out of the question.

Tesla may be about to kickstart something we really aren't prepared for, Vauxhall, Honda, Ford, Toyota and all the other big names are developing EV's as well. Just where is that power going to come from??

Disclaimer - Please double check my estimates above, car sales and average mileage are from reputable sources. Power consumption is based on Teslas figures for their Model S. EV sales are purely made up but based on the UK going EV crazy in the next 5 - 15 years as diesels are clobbered for murdering people with their particulate emissions.

Edited by Blaster72 on Friday 29th April 23:12

Yes there is enough capacity

Put it this way, can you currently run a hob or a shower in your home? If so that will be 7+ kW. Charging you car would need that power for 1 hour. If you spread that over night then its down to less than 1kW.

Unless your lights dim when you use your hob/shower, then the infrastructure from the generator to your home can already cope with the energy and power demands.

There may be an issue with peak power demand, but that just means some people can't charge while using say a hob or shower. I could design the fully automated hardware to do that in about 10 minutes, and it would cost no more than a normal RCD.

[98elise]

Tuna said:

98elise said:

I would buy one because they are powerful, simple and efficient. i value that above the fuel tank size. Like it or not electric motors are the only way to do that.

And twice the weight of a simple and efficient ICE car, with all the handling and response issues that entails.

98elise said:

When you ask where the extra power is coming from do you mean green replacment, or just additional energy? If its just energy then we have enough already. If we needed to go fully green then a domestic sized solar PV will provide enough energy of an average driver.

We should revisit this thread in five years' time. My betting is that in the short term electricity is going to start getting increasingly expensive. We barely have enough energy at present, and for transport we rely on the majority of that in the form of oil based fuels that are directly burned in vehicles. Change the ICE to EV and we don't have anywhere else to burn that oil. Nor do we have spare capacity in the other generating sources.

Why do you think they have an issue with handling and response. All the reviews say they handle very well, and response is immediate. EV's produce huge torque from zero revs. Have you watched some of the tesla accleration videos on youtube?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iHDTsFVX_c8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vk2cdwpg0jI

Even the lowest power EV's have a good throttle response. No gears no clutch, just go.

Edited by 98elise on Saturday 30th April 08:30

[98elise]

Blaster72 said:

Mr Will said:

speedking31 said:

k-ink said:

Nope. Deserts in the Middle East. Or Oceans.

What about the distribution network required to get the energy to where it is required?

Yeah, obviously an insurmountable problem. Good job oil is in such convenient locations and we don't have to get billions of barrels of it from the middle east or the bottom of the ocean...

Well, he does have a point. You can't exactly put solar energy in a barrel and ship it to Europe. Can't transmit it through power lines that distance either without some pretty huge transmission losses.

Oil is completely different, stick it in a ship or a pipeline and send it anywhere in the world no problem.

Energy supply for mass take up of electric cars is a huge hurdle as is producing it without just ending up moving massive pollution elsewhere. Nuclear power seems feasible but we're struggling to even build one station in the Uk extra let alone the numbers needed to power hundreds of thousands of EVs. Nuclear does all still have a waste by product issue to deal with.

With regard to moving the polution elsewhere, the current electricity mix includes about 20% renewables, and 25% nuclear.

http://www.edie.net/news/10/The-UKs-ever-changing-...

That means 45% of EV power produces no emissions. Any changes to that mix are immediately passed passed on.

[k-ink]

coetzeeh said:

and the same at Schiphol - 300 Tesla taxis apparently acquired at HEAVILY discounted prices according to a business associate. Certainly makes sense.

Even if Tesla supply cars at cost price it makes great business sense. They are getting hundreds of potential customers into test drives for free.

[BigBen]

Smart meters are coming where electricity tariffs can be infinitely variable, at the moment they are weirdly (IMO) being sold as nothing more than hard wired energy monitors but they have so much more capability than this. It is perfectly feasible to have a smart meter that is configured with instructions such as:

IF price <= 7p per KwH charge my car.

I am now of course waiting for the next comment of what if it never falls below 8p and your wake up to a flat battery, but the idea is sound.

Ultimately other appliances will connect to your smart meter so you can do stuff like run your washing machine at the cheapest possible time etc.

In fact the charge I have got now for my EV has a modem built in and can be configured to charge when you tell it rather than at the time you plug in.

Ben

[k-ink]

Blaster72 said:

Looks like Ford are joining the party and have bought a Model X to play with

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/...

Ford have only just started looking into electric and claim they want to be leaders. Good luck with that!

[Blaster72]

Smart meters is a very good point and a good way of controlling load through the night.

Does anyone know if HGV hybrids or even EVs are being developed? Might be hard to get the range but the power and torque is already there.

We have a few EV vans at work used by our property management contractor , they seem to be ideal for that sort of use as they operate in the confines of an airport and mostly during the day. They don't need massive range.

Also, does anyone know what percentage of Model 3 orders were from the UK?

[RobDickinson]

Blaster72 said:

Does anyone know if HGV hybrids or even EVs are being developed?

Full on haulage HGV's are damned tricky to do. They require a large percentage of their power for long periods.

No way can you have enough batteries, and a range extender system wont really work either.

[FurtiveFreddy]

Blaster72 said:

Also, does anyone know what percentage of Model 3 orders were from the UK?

This is about as close as we can get to knowing right now:

Estimates around 13,000 Model 3 reservations in the UK.

http://model3.ocasual.com/

[k-ink]

Those sales figures look huge. Perhaps this is the turning point where spotting a Tesla switches from a rarity to a common occurrence. Seeing that many electric vehicles on the road may set people off trying to catch up with the neighbours and accelerate sales further.

[Flooble]

No idea about the Model 3 orders, however, I'd point out that HGVs get maybe 5 mpg and they have 1000 litre tanks to minimise downtime. I can't see there ever being an Electric HGV - you'd need to fill the entire 44 tonne trailer with batteries and then pop a small light load in the gaps :-)

Maybe it would be worth fitting regenerative brakes as on a few petrol cars already, but I doubt HGV drivers particularly enjoy using the brakes anyway (what with the risk of jack knifing and so on).

[98elise]

k-ink said:

Those sales figures look huge. Perhaps this is the turning point where spotting a Tesla switches from a rarity to a common occurrence. Seeing that many electric vehicles on the road may set people off trying to catch up with the neighbours and accelerate sales further.

The MX5 has just passed the 1m mark after 25 years of production, and they are hardly a rare sight (I have one on my drive ). The model 3 is at nearly half that in a couple of months. Thats without even seeing the finished car, or any test drives, or any company car buyers.

I'm about number 300k based on ordering 24 hours after the reveal, so it will be a couple of years until I get mine

I'm now looking at a second hand S in the interim

[Hugh Jarse]

Flooble said:

No idea about the Model 3 orders, however, I'd point out that HGVs get maybe 5 mpg and they have 1000 litre tanks to minimise downtime. I can't see there ever being an Electric HGV - you'd need to fill the entire 44 tonne trailer with batteries and then pop a small light load in the gaps :-)

Maybe it would be worth fitting regenerative brakes as on a few petrol cars already, but I doubt HGV drivers particularly enjoy using the brakes anyway (what with the risk of jack knifing and so on).

EM + battery + optimised recharge engine is more efficient than a direct coupled engine.
I did try to explain this to a Swedish truck manufacturer in 2003.
NOW they are building ONE to "see". A bit fecking annoying.

[Flooble]

Hugh Jarse said:

EM + battery + optimised recharge engine is more efficient than a direct coupled engine.
I did try to explain this to a Swedish truck manufacturer in 2003.
NOW they are building ONE to "see". A bit fecking annoying.

So are you thinking more like a diesel-electric locomotive than the usual vehicular hybrid setup?

[Hugh Jarse]

Flooble said:

Hugh Jarse said:

EM + battery + optimised recharge engine is more efficient than a direct coupled engine.
I did try to explain this to a Swedish truck manufacturer in 2003.
NOW they are building ONE to "see". A bit fecking annoying.

So are you thinking more like a diesel-electric locomotive than the usual vehicular hybrid setup?

Yes nowt new then or now.
Or a Porsche Elefant
Especially relevant for trucks, they generally just trundle with the occasional mountain pass/slip road.

[Hugh Jarse]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elefant
"Drive[edit]

The preserved American-captured Elefant, showing the suspension it shared with the VK 4501 (P) chassis.
The two Porsche air cooled engines in each vehicle were replaced by two 300 PS (296 hp; 221 kW) Maybach HL 120 TRM engines. The engines drove a single Siemens-Schuckert 500 VA generator, which powered two Siemens 230 kW (312.7 PS) output-apiece electric motors, one each connected to each of the rear sprockets. The electric motors also acted as the vehicle's steering unit. This "petrol-electrical" drive delivered 0.11 km/l (909 litres/100 km) off road and 0.15 km/l (667 litres/100 km) on road at a maximum speed of 10 km/h off road and 30 km/h on road. In addition to this high fuel consumption and poor performance, the vehicle was also maintenance-intensive; the sprockets needed to be changed every 500 km.
Porsche had experience of this form of petrol-electric transmission extending back to 1901, when he designed a car that used it."

[George111]

k-ink said:

Those sales figures look huge. Perhaps this is the turning point where spotting a Tesla switches from a rarity to a common occurrence. Seeing that many electric vehicles on the road may set people off trying to catch up with the neighbours and accelerate sales further.

It's not a sales figure, it's an expression of interest figure with a 100% refundable deposit so zero commitment. Many of them will just be hoping to get a freebie drive or some goodies in the post. Tesla are not even making them yet, don't have a manufacturing date nor are there enough chargers in the UK to make it feasible for anybody but the dedicated early adopters/tech heads to buy in the quantities suggested.

This thread is heading into fantasy land, all the serious issues are being dismissed with statements akin to "it'll all be OK in the end" and "if we build it they will come" mentality. Life and human nature isn't like that and we're not going to see thousands of Model 3s all over the place any time soon.

As for keeping up with the neighbours . . . I think range envy will become the dominant feeling as petrol and diesel cars head towards 70-80mpg with a range of 1000 miles Not only that but oil prices will come lower than they are now and stay low whilst electricity prices rise as we turn more of the UK into a windmill and solar wasteland feeding the corporates who run them with huge subsidies, paid for by a growing number of elderly people who can least afford it.

[wemorgan]

I doubt ICE range will not change much. As economy improves the fuel tank volume reduces.

As for your other comments, you're giving opinions, not facts.

[98elise]

George111 said:

k-ink said:

Those sales figures look huge. Perhaps this is the turning point where spotting a Tesla switches from a rarity to a common occurrence. Seeing that many electric vehicles on the road may set people off trying to catch up with the neighbours and accelerate sales further.

It's not a sales figure, it's an expression of interest figure with a 100% refundable deposit so zero commitment. Many of them will just be hoping to get a freebie drive or some goodies in the post. Tesla are not even making them yet, don't have a manufacturing date nor are there enough chargers in the UK to make it feasible for anybody but the dedicated early adopters/tech heads to buy in the quantities suggested.

This thread is heading into fantasy land, all the serious issues are being dismissed with statements akin to "it'll all be OK in the end" and "if we build it they will come" mentality. Life and human nature isn't like that and we're not going to see thousands of Model 3s all over the place any time soon.

As for keeping up with the neighbours . . . I think range envy will become the dominant feeling as petrol and diesel cars head towards 70-80mpg with a range of 1000 miles Not only that but oil prices will come lower than they are now and stay low whilst electricity prices rise as we turn more of the UK into a windmill and solar wasteland feeding the corporates who run them with huge subsidies, paid for by a growing number of elderly people who can least afford it.

Tesla has a charger built in so as long as you have power, you have a charger.

I'm surprised you think people won't change. 150 years ago the car hadn't been invented, and nor had the plane. If you wanted to travel you used a horse or your feet.

When I was a kid computers were the stuff of science fiction. Now I have around 6 computers in my livingroom alone.

People adapt and change all the time.

[Blaster72]

FurtiveFreddy said:

This is about as close as we can get to knowing right now:

Estimates around 13,000 Model 3 reservations in the UK.

http://model3.ocasual.com/

Thanks Freddy, that's a huge number!