RE: Tesla Model S: Review
Discussion
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?
One size doesn't fit all shocker! On a more serious note, the supercharger network will fill the car to 80% in about 40 minutes, so unless you feel lke doing the 12 hour stint without any food etc, the a 250-300 mile range will suit most people.
I will buy one as soon as they are in my price range. They tick every box (and more) for my daily motoring needs.
Edited by 98elise on Wednesday 28th May 19:36
DiscoColin said:
Debaser said:
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. 
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. Was the i3 range extender mentioned in this thread?
kambites said:
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
if electric vehicles with onboard battery storage are ever to be used to generally replace the nassty nassty internal combustion engineses, there will need to be a whole bunch more generating capacity (and by a whole bunch i mean shedloads and shedloads). like mr musk, i will leave others to work out the specific numbers, but we are talking terawatts of new electrical power supply. at least.
so...you need to construct a lot more generating capacity. and all that needs to have a source of energy to convert into electricity. and vastly expand the transmission and distribution network to get the electricity to where it is needed.
there are a number of issues to deal with in this scenario:
1. cost. where is the investment coming from to design, build, operate and maintain all this new infrastructure? governments can barely afford to maintain the highway network, never mind fund an enormous expansion of this order of magnitude. perhaps the electrical utilities will jump in, but the size of the expansion required is a tall order even for companies of the size of E.on etc. Perhaps PPP could be used to procure the infrastructure, but then you have huge lead times and the risk of political games obstructing, delaying or even cancelling projects. perhaps you could place a levy on companies like Tesla, so that they contribute to constructing the infrastructure necessary to their continued ability to make a profit selling cars. but i'm guessing that self-made billionaires would fight that idea!
2. source of energy. if you use fossil fuels, all you're doing is shifting the source of the emissions (and increasing the inefficiency of the process of energy conversion), and in no way postponing the final reckoning of the end of fossil fuels. (in this case, zero emissions is merely a fiction that makes celebs feel good about themselves, while poor people near the polluting source get all the emissions and health problems...) other sources of energy come with issues also: hydroelectric requires the right sort of geography, and a willingness to flood large parts of it; wind, tidal and solar sources would require huge investment in infrastructure and may be impractical to supply the large sum of energy required. nuclear power carries other risks entirely.
3. assuming that you find the money to invest, and you decide on a preferred source (or, more likely, mix of sources) of energy, where do you locate all this new generating capacity? it has to go somewhere, and many people, while in principle in favour of the new construction, would actually rather not have it actually near them. so there are many planning issues to overcome (see earlier note about politics being a problem). this brings up the next major issue:
4. time. to implement such a major sea-change in society will take decades, not years. even if you had total buy-in from all concerned regarding the implementation of EVs with onboard battery storage as our future personal transportation solution, you wouldn't get a functioning infrastructure in much less than twenty years, probably double that. with the current lack of consensus, you could reasonably double that again, out to eighty years. (before you poo-poo that, consider that by the time Crossrail opens for business in 2018, it will have taken over 25 years from conception to completion - and that is a single rail line extension to an existing network consisting of less than 100km of new track in total, with broad-based support for it.)
i don't see EVs such as the Tesla as really much more than novelty items. there is no workable plan for scale-up of them from isolated instances to full scale implementation. there isn't the funding to create the infrastructure. and no-one has explained how the new energy will be sourced any more efficiently or ecologically-friendly than what we do today. and we haven't even dealt with the technical limitations of the vehicles themselves (largely because I think it is likely that engineers would be able, with time and funding, to minimise these limitations to the point where they would no longer be such obstacles - we're already seeing the beginnings of that with vehicles like the Model S.)
hybrid vehicles are an inelegant stopgap. they will eke out the fossil fuels a bit longer, but ultimately they are a design dead-end. and carrying two propulsion technologies is just plain extravagant and inefficient in engineering terms, regardless of the mpg numbers.
fuel cells may be the ultimate solution, but currently they also have major drawbacks. and there are always the safety issues surrounding storing large amounts of pressurised highly inflammable fuel a few inches from the occupants.
i'm not sure what the answer is, but i'm fairly certain that EVs with onboard battery storage are not.
roll on practical nuclear fusion, and we'll all have a Delorean with a Mr Fusion unit in back. (or maybe we'll strip out that godawful hybrid powertrain from that old Laferrari we found on the pistonheads classifieds and stick a Mr Fusion unit in that.)
Edited by canucklehead on Wednesday 28th May 22:32
You've going to have to give your reasoning behind that post, given that the current grid runs, on average, at only about 60% capacity. Running all private passenger vehicles in the UK (at current EV efficiencies) would use roughly 20% of total grid capacity, so about half the "slack" if you can stagger the charging correctly.
Given that I don't believe we'll see more than 1/4 of private vehicle mileage going electric in our lifetimes, I simply don't see the problem - you're talking about an extra 5% load on a grid currently running at 60% capacity, being used in such a way that there is no real penalty to cutting power for brief periods of necessary and where most of the demand would be off-peak anyway.
As far as I know, no-one has ever tried to claim that every car in the UK is suddenly going to convert to a fully electric drive-train tomorrow.
Given that I don't believe we'll see more than 1/4 of private vehicle mileage going electric in our lifetimes, I simply don't see the problem - you're talking about an extra 5% load on a grid currently running at 60% capacity, being used in such a way that there is no real penalty to cutting power for brief periods of necessary and where most of the demand would be off-peak anyway.
As far as I know, no-one has ever tried to claim that every car in the UK is suddenly going to convert to a fully electric drive-train tomorrow.
Edited by kambites on Wednesday 28th May 23:00
jazzyjeff said:
TooMany2cvs said:
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?
Why do you believe that will be necessary? They are well established this side of the pond and are very practical cars. I loved the one I tested. Obviously if you are doing 500 mile drives regularly its not the best car, but for a daily commuter its superb. The silence is wonderfully soothing, the handling is surprisingly sporty and overall its a very cool car. I hated the huge touch screen because you always have lots of fingerprints on it. Other than that..great and fairly practical car.
Ellieb10 said:
I drove one of Vestas' Tesla Roadsters in Denmark few years ago. Flooring it from a standing start, the two sensory experiences were a slight smell of ozone and the feeling of having left your brain a few hundred meters behind you. Otherwise, it went round corners a bit like a very heavy brick.
I'd consider buying one of these (excellent speed with high WAF) but its a hefty wedge with very little reassurance about residuals.
Elon has personally guaranteed the resale value of the car...I'd consider buying one of these (excellent speed with high WAF) but its a hefty wedge with very little reassurance about residuals.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/04/0...
phase90 said:
Elon has personally guaranteed the resale value of the car...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/04/0...
He won't be able to afford to the guarantee if S&P has their way.http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/04/0...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-27/tesla-get...
canucklehead said:
kambites said:
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
if electric vehicles with onboard battery storage are ever to be used to generally replace the nassty nassty internal combustion engineses, there will need to be a whole bunch more generating capacity (and by a whole bunch i mean shedloads and shedloads). like mr musk, i will leave others to work out the specific numbers, but we are talking terawatts of new electrical power supply. at least.
so...you need to construct a lot more generating capacity. and all that needs to have a source of energy to convert into electricity. and vastly expand the transmission and distribution network to get the electricity to where it is needed.
there are a number of issues to deal with in this scenario:
1. cost. where is the investment coming from to design, build, operate and maintain all this new infrastructure? governments can barely afford to maintain the highway network, never mind fund an enormous expansion of this order of magnitude. perhaps the electrical utilities will jump in, but the size of the expansion required is a tall order even for companies of the size of E.on etc. Perhaps PPP could be used to procure the infrastructure, but then you have huge lead times and the risk of political games obstructing, delaying or even cancelling projects. perhaps you could place a levy on companies like Tesla, so that they contribute to constructing the infrastructure necessary to their continued ability to make a profit selling cars. but i'm guessing that self-made billionaires would fight that idea!
2. source of energy. if you use fossil fuels, all you're doing is shifting the source of the emissions (and increasing the inefficiency of the process of energy conversion), and in no way postponing the final reckoning of the end of fossil fuels. (in this case, zero emissions is merely a fiction that makes celebs feel good about themselves, while poor people near the polluting source get all the emissions and health problems...) other sources of energy come with issues also: hydroelectric requires the right sort of geography, and a willingness to flood large parts of it; wind, tidal and solar sources would require huge investment in infrastructure and may be impractical to supply the large sum of energy required. nuclear power carries other risks entirely.
3. assuming that you find the money to invest, and you decide on a preferred source (or, more likely, mix of sources) of energy, where do you locate all this new generating capacity? it has to go somewhere, and many people, while in principle in favour of the new construction, would actually rather not have it actually near them. so there are many planning issues to overcome (see earlier note about politics being a problem). this brings up the next major issue:
4. time. to implement such a major sea-change in society will take decades, not years. even if you had total buy-in from all concerned regarding the implementation of EVs with onboard battery storage as our future personal transportation solution, you wouldn't get a functioning infrastructure in much less than twenty years, probably double that. with the current lack of consensus, you could reasonably double that again, out to eighty years. (before you poo-poo that, consider that by the time Crossrail opens for business in 2018, it will have taken over 25 years from conception to completion - and that is a single rail line extension to an existing network consisting of less than 100km of new track in total, with broad-based support for it.)
i don't see EVs such as the Tesla as really much more than novelty items. there is no workable plan for scale-up of them from isolated instances to full scale implementation. there isn't the funding to create the infrastructure. and no-one has explained how the new energy will be sourced any more efficiently or ecologically-friendly than what we do today. and we haven't even dealt with the technical limitations of the vehicles themselves (largely because I think it is likely that engineers would be able, with time and funding, to minimise these limitations to the point where they would no longer be such obstacles - we're already seeing the beginnings of that with vehicles like the Model S.)
hybrid vehicles are an inelegant stopgap. they will eke out the fossil fuels a bit longer, but ultimately they are a design dead-end. and carrying two propulsion technologies is just plain extravagant and inefficient in engineering terms, regardless of the mpg numbers.
fuel cells may be the ultimate solution, but currently they also have major drawbacks. and there are always the safety issues surrounding storing large amounts of pressurised highly inflammable fuel a few inches from the occupants.
i'm not sure what the answer is, but i'm fairly certain that EVs with onboard battery storage are not.
roll on practical nuclear fusion, and we'll all have a Delorean with a Mr Fusion unit in back. (or maybe we'll strip out that godawful hybrid powertrain from that old Laferrari we found on the pistonheads classifieds and stick a Mr Fusion unit in that.)
Edited by canucklehead on Wednesday 28th May 22:32
To put 9kWh in context, its about the same amount of energy as running a hob or a low powered shower for an hour. In addition it doesn't need to be 9kW for 1Hr. It can be 1kW for 9 hours (or what ever way you want to divide it)
As to your comment about inefficiency, like most people you have ignored the energy cost in producing petrol. To get a gallon of petrol into your tank about 7kWh has already been consumed in the process. If you diverted that 7kWh to your Ev it would already be 25 miles up the road with out needing to expend any more energy.
Its simple physics.
Edited by 98elise on Thursday 29th May 07:40
Edited by 98elise on Thursday 29th May 07:44
vtgts300kw said:
Goofnik said:
Err, they haven't rolled out this phase yet, but Supercharger stations will allow you to swap battery packs in 3-5 minutes for a fee (to get a full pack instantly). It does present interesting logistical issues, but swapping packs is not a problem for the Model S (and presumably Model X and Model E).
Swapping batteries on the Model S won't happen, it would be virtually impossible for a machine to do it. All that "stunt" did was prove that it COULD be possible, in the future.ks. Its been possible to do that sort of thing for decades. I've worked on systems from the late 70's that were doing more complex stuff than unding a few bolts and replacing a big box.I was actually undewhelmed by the demo. You shouldn't even need to line the car up so carefully.
Its unlikely to happen because its not actually needed when you have 250-300 mile range (about 4-5hours driving) and a supercharge station can recharge in 40 minutes. If you need more capacity than that, then an EV is not for you.
405dogvan said:
The future may lie in other types of battery tho - the Japanese have a new battery with similar power capabilities to Lithium but which recharges 10 times faster and lasts 10 times longer
This article?http://www.cnet.com/news/japanese-company-promises...
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