RE: Tesla Model S Revealed

[carl_w]

Tuna said:

I'm often stuck in Californian traffic jams. Really messes up my day. Especially when I'm trying to get to London.

Where's it being made, and where is its primary market?

Hint: where have the majority of Tesla Roadsters been sold?

Edited by carl_w on Saturday 28th March 00:14

[Mr Fenix]

I think Tesla are on the right track and making decent if difficult headway into one possible future of the car. I have to agree with an early post stating that the change to electric cars will be a gradual one with more up take as the technology improves.

Personally something that looks as good as this should be given a chance. Heck if my OH used this to make the daily commute to work we'd be saving hundreds of dollars a month. Assuming the range is even only 1/2 or even just a 1/3 of the quoted figures that's still worth it to an awful lot of people.

Biggest problem I can see is the existing electric grid isn't capable of supplying enough juice to everyone to power these. A whole new way of delivering the leccy has to designed and implemented for this to work.

[Steve_s5]

Bit like a maseratti granturismo, And its electric boo

[A Scotsman]

Tuna said:

There is going to be an energy crunch in the next decade, regardless of whether we stick with petrol, move to LPG or hydrogen or run our cars on electricity. Of all of those, moving to electricity gives us the greatest flexibility as to where the power for our cars ultimately comes from.

Actually, moving to electricity is just about the worst thing we could do. Some 40% of all the energy we use is transport related so the implication is that we will need to generate an awful lot more electricity to fill that 40% gap. Really, you're talking about nearly doubling the electricity we generate and that just isn't very practical.

[herewego]

The government willl need to specify that all electricity used for transport must be renewable.


Someone else working on one here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/15/...

Edited by herewego on Saturday 28th March 15:58

[hot metal]

Looks like an Aston mated with a Mondeo

plus no noise

[A Scotsman]

herewego said:

Someone else working on one here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/15/...

Edited by herewego on Saturday 28th March 15:58

"The batteries came from Korea, the brushless engines from America."

Oh joy... that'll help the balance of payments...

[Talksteer]

A Scotsman said:

Tuna said:

There is going to be an energy crunch in the next decade, regardless of whether we stick with petrol, move to LPG or hydrogen or run our cars on electricity. Of all of those, moving to electricity gives us the greatest flexibility as to where the power for our cars ultimately comes from.

Actually, moving to electricity is just about the worst thing we could do. Some 40% of all the energy we use is transport related so the implication is that we will need to generate an awful lot more electricity to fill that 40% gap. Really, you're talking about nearly doubling the electricity we generate and that just isn't very practical.

The UK grid is scaled to cope with peak power demands in winter on a week day, at night and at the weekends power demand is less than 50% of this. The vast majority of car charging is likely to be at weekends or over night hence will be tapping into unused grid capacity. In fact if car charging was coupled to smart meters it could actually greatly help the grid, now we have to have reserve plants spinning ready to take peak load when that occurs, in the future if we had millions of car battery packs connected to the grid at any one time we could potentially supply peak loads from the car batteries.

[Scuffers]

Riyazc said:

it takes 4 hrs from a 220v socket, from an industrial socket it will take a lot less time to fully charge!

that's not a domestic socket for 4 Hours!

think about it, 13A max at 220V for 4 hours is nothing like that much (actually ~11.4Kw/h)

(current Tesla stores some 53Kw/h in it's battery, to do this in 4 hours (assuming 100% efficent charge)would need 60A socket)

[herewego]

Scuffers said:

Riyazc said:

it takes 4 hrs from a 220v socket, from an industrial socket it will take a lot less time to fully charge!

that's not a domestic socket for 4 Hours!

think about it, 13A max at 220V for 4 hours is nothing like that much (actually ~11.4Kw/h)

(current Tesla stores some 53Kw/h in it's battery, to do this in 4 hours (assuming 100% efficent charge)would need 60A socket)

/h?

[Tuna]

A Scotsman said:

Tuna said:

There is going to be an energy crunch in the next decade, regardless of whether we stick with petrol, move to LPG or hydrogen or run our cars on electricity. Of all of those, moving to electricity gives us the greatest flexibility as to where the power for our cars ultimately comes from.

Actually, moving to electricity is just about the worst thing we could do. Some 40% of all the energy we use is transport related so the implication is that we will need to generate an awful lot more electricity to fill that 40% gap. Really, you're talking about nearly doubling the electricity we generate and that just isn't very practical.

As has been pointed out, we don't use anywhere near our full capacity overnight. More importantly, it's not as if we'd make the full switch in a week. At an estimate, it'd take a couple of decades of 100% electric sales before you'd see our current fleet replaced. So more reasonably, you might be looking at thirty or forty years before we'd need to fill that 40% gap.

The energy crisis is likely to happen a long time before then. Any trend towards take up of electric vehicles would be likely to feed into our national energy policy (if we ever get round to having one).

[CDP]

We could improve the motorway range by putting power rails down the middle of each lane. Add a slot and you don't even have to steer.

[Tuna]

carl_w said:

Tuna said:

I'm often stuck in Californian traffic jams. Really messes up my day. Especially when I'm trying to get to London.

Where's it being made, and where is its primary market?

Hint: where have the majority of Tesla Roadsters been sold?

And where is so paranoid about emissions that cars like this are likely to be legislated for? There is a reason why the majority of Teslas have been sold there.

Here's a hint for you. This car isn't aimed solely at wealthy American celebrities.

[herewego]

Tuna said:

A Scotsman said:

Tuna said:

There is going to be an energy crunch in the next decade, regardless of whether we stick with petrol, move to LPG or hydrogen or run our cars on electricity. Of all of those, moving to electricity gives us the greatest flexibility as to where the power for our cars ultimately comes from.

Actually, moving to electricity is just about the worst thing we could do. Some 40% of all the energy we use is transport related so the implication is that we will need to generate an awful lot more electricity to fill that 40% gap. Really, you're talking about nearly doubling the electricity we generate and that just isn't very practical.

As has been pointed out, we don't use anywhere near our full capacity overnight. More importantly, it's not as if we'd make the full switch in a week. At an estimate, it'd take a couple of decades of 100% electric sales before you'd see our current fleet replaced. So more reasonably, you might be looking at thirty or forty years before we'd need to fill that 40% gap.

The energy crisis is likely to happen a long time before then. Any trend towards take up of electric vehicles would be likely to feed into our national energy policy (if we ever get round to having one).

However we don't want to be burning more coal and gas, we need massive investment in renewables the intermittent nature of which would pose no problem for vehicle battery storage.

[CDP]

Oil comes from minute fossillised sea creatures. This implies minute sea creatures probably contains energy. If you could efficiently gather them up it would avoid all this waiting around for it to turn into oil.

Actually don't whales perform this collection duty for us? How much oil can we get out of a whale?

[carl_w]

Tuna said:

Here's a hint for you. This car isn't aimed solely at wealthy American celebrities.

I suspect, however, that they will form a significant proportion of the purchasing demographic.

[Maseroop]

[quote=CypherP]KInda ripped off the SLR style wheels though, [quote]

Those wheels are actually Veilside aftermarket jobies, so they dont even hav that much imagination to copy th McMerc !!

[VxDuncan]

EliseNick said:

Lucozade said "Wonder why they didn't try to use some solar panel arrangements on the roof to trickle charge the batteries when the car is parked outside and to keep the batteries topped up. Too costly, too heavy, etc."

My calculations suggest that, assuming you could fit 2sqm of solar panel on there somewhere, with an efficiency of 10%, if you left it outside during an eight hour working day in summer in England, you would accumulate 16.8 miles worth of charge - not to be sniffed at.

The mass would be a few kg at most. I don't know why they didn't do this. (See also the Eco Elise.) I suppose it would be an easy thing to integrate into the design, although it would mean your car had to be essentially black.

It's worst than that - rather than having solar panels it's got a bloody glass roof! I mean, can you imagine the solar loading in the californian sun with that roof? Get into it after leaving it parked up all day on rodeo drive or whatever and the battry'd be flat before the aircon had managed to get the cabin down to comfortable temps.

Even with the latest heat-reflective glass that roof is putting lots of extra load on the aircon and adding significant additional mass.

It all suggests to me that this design is a REALLY EARLY concept (more than the PR suggests) and should probably be taken with a significant block of rock salt.

[Trick Monkey]

Finally, or almost finally, an electric car, that a person could afford, practical with 5 to 7 seats, looks good, and has performance to blow away all those hot hatches. If this makes it into production and proves to be reliable and as good as they say, the future looks good!

[funwithrevs]

Mr Fenix said:

I think Tesla are on the right track and making decent if difficult headway into one possible future of the car. I have to agree with an early post stating that the change to electric cars will be a gradual one with more up take as the technology improves.

Personally something that looks as good as this should be given a chance. Heck if my OH used this to make the daily commute to work we'd be saving hundreds of dollars a month. Assuming the range is even only 1/2 or even just a 1/3 of the quoted figures that's still worth it to an awful lot of people.

Biggest problem I can see is the existing electric grid isn't capable of supplying enough juice to everyone to power these. A whole new way of delivering the leccy has to designed and implemented for this to work.

The charging circuit can ask the leccy company via the internet to request permission to charge. If the demand gets too high, then the leccy company can ask some fully charged cars to back-generate for a bit to hold up the grid in that area until the demand drops.

I get the impression that Tesla is concentrating on the motor and drivetrain side though, slapping a load of batteries on there is kind of an afterthought. That makes sense to me, the whole energy storage problem is still in flux but they can solve the technicalities of the drivetrain now and that will always be useful tech.

Hydrogen Fuel cell, Methanol fuel cell, petrol generator with small battery pack, Mr Fusion, whatever wins I'm sure they can adapt pretty fast.

Personally I want my charging alternator to run off a small rear mounted jet engine so my car can look like the batmobile