Tesla Model S named '2013 Automobile of the Year'
Elon Musk's much-anticipated, long-delayed, taxpayer-supported, company-critical Tesla Model S sport sedan has been named as the 2013 Automobile of the Year by the Motor City–centric Automobile magazine. "It's the performance that won us over," said the magazine's editor-in-chief Jean Jennings when announcing the award. "The …
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Reasons enough why this goes nowhere:
16 Fisker Karmas Caught Fire During The Hurricane
http://www.businessinsider.com/16-fisker-karmas-catch-fire-in-hurricane-2012-10
Umm
An equivalent statement would be "Ferraris catch fire, so don't buy a Lamborghini"
???
I'm impressed by the engineering (if not the weight!)
But totally baffled how anyone can think that electric cars are a good idea...
Even ignoring the serious problems with range and charging time, a back of the envelope calculation (I shan't bother you with it) reveals that the UK uses approximately the same energy supplied by liquid fuels in cars along - let's not bother with lorries, hmm? - as the entire national electricity grid provides.
So a conversion to electric cars would require twice the generator power, twice the delivery infrastructure, twice the short-term storage - and you can bet that as petrol/diesel tax revenues disappear that electricity for cars will be taxed the same way and to the same extent.
An electric car works - as a local noise and anti-pollution measure - if you're making short trips within a city. And if it's a short trip, why aren't you using public transport? Or your feet, or a bicycle?
A thousand kilometre trip takes three days; with current technology a usable electric range won't get many people to work and back (and I'm not convinced that there's that much more scope for energy storage in other than convenient high-energy-density hydrocarbon fuels) and the only reasons they're bought is that they're massively subsidised by the has-to-appear-green government (i.e. my taxes) and freedom from certain in-city charges in London.
Lovely car, shame about the concept.
Re: I'm impressed by the engineering (if not the weight!)
Lets start with the fact that oil is a diminishing resource shall we? Its price is only going to go up. Electric vehicles are going to be much cheaper to run, if they aren't already.
Next generation capacity. Yes, we'll need more of it, but EV charging will happen mostly at night when we've got spare capacity and are trying to encourage people to use power (Economy 7 anyone?). One advantage to having all of this battery capacity if that the grid can pull power back from them at peak load (and the battery owners get paid for this).
City travel on public transport has its problems. London, for example, is great if you want to go in or out of town, not so good if you want to travel sideways. Services don't always run (stopping at nights) and trying to carry significant amounts of cargo (shopping, tools, equipment etc) doesn't work well. Significant numbers of city dwellers have a car in addition to using public transport because of this.
Very few people make 1000km trips on a regular basis. What's wrong with hiring something like an Ampera or taking public transport for the rare occasion that you do?
Re: I'm impressed by the engineering (if not the weight!)
Not quite. The massive electrical infrastructure we have in the UK is relatively idle at night (when the bulk of charging is expected to take place). As long as you don't need to charge your car instantly at 5pm, the overall effect on the grid if people switch to electric transport isn't that significant (another few gigawatts, tops, on the 60-80GW we already have).
As others have pointed out, electric cars aren't notably greener out of the box than fossil-fuel powered cars (they're about the same, give or take whichever bias takes your fancy).
The main argument in their favour is that it's possible to de-carbon the production of electricity to some degree. That isn't currently possible with petrol, diesel or natural gas.
Re: I'm impressed by the engineering (if not the weight!)
@Steve Todd & Clanger
I agree. There is scope for some slack in the distribution (if not necessarily the energy supply - aren't we supposed to run out of lights in 2015? It was a politician said that, so we probably shouldn't believe it.) for overnight charging, but that doesn't help with people who commute such a distance that they need to charge at each end. As you say, not many people regularly do 1000km trips, but enough do long journeys to jam the motorways both here and on the continent...
The argument is made that people should live close to their work, should buy small cars or use public transport, should be priced off the roads, should use electric cars. And the argument ignores the basic fact of "we are where we are". We work where we can find work, and can rarely afford to move to where work is (or need two people in the family working in different locations.) We should buy small cars with 70-80mpg... but we have the cars we have, and we like them, and even if we can afford to change them, we change them for something the same size, or faster, or bigger. Look at the number of 4*4s around, for example. We should use the train or a bus - but a trip that costs thirty quid in fuel in a ten year old car (no depreciation costs) might cost twice or three times that in a train, or take six times as long in a bus, assuming you can get to the station and find one that's going when and where you want it.
There are major problems with traffic, transport, and infrastructure - but I don't think electric cars solve it except in massaging people's egos: "Aren't I green!"
@Neil
The 2015 date was when peak demand was expected to exceed supply. Note the word peak. There is actually quite a lot of surplus power overnight, and this will continue after that date.
There as assorted things you can do to mitigate the distance that people need to travel in to work, non of which are likely to happen rapidly. As it is most people drive less than 50 miles per day as part of their commute (that's 12,000 miles a year BTW) and that's perfectly practical for electric vehicles as they currently stand. No one is expecting that electric cars will replace petrol overnight, but as the price of petrol increases and the cost of electric vehicles comes down (and it will, new battery technologies are in development and economies of scale will cut in) then they will become progressively more popular.
As it is cities like London are in breach of EU air quality laws (and that breach means that people are dying of respiratory disease that didn't have to). We NEED low emission vehicles now in order to help resolve the problem, and I couldn't give a fig what reason people use to buy them.
Re: @Neil
"economies of scale will cut in"
The potential benefits of economies of scale are being artificially delayed because of govt subsidies.
The cost of a having a Solar PV array on the roof has barely moved in the last few years despite the huge economies of scale in recent years let alone the "market driven competition" from the huge array of installers out there prepared to fleece you.
Re: I'm impressed by the engineering (if not the weight!)
Fiscker Karma is reportedly 5,300 lbs. Oink oink.
Re: I'm impressed by the engineering (if not the weight!)
"if you're making short trips within a city. And if it's a short trip, why aren't you using public transport? Or your feet, or a bicycle?"
Agree, but human nature is a bit tricky. And it depends how your country has developed so far.
Let's have an anecdotal example.... in a certain ex-CCCP but now (we live in hope?) developing Euroland country, a well-known young female celebrity was interviewed after spending some time living and working in Germany.
Her reaction to it:, paraphrasing:- "I can''t believe that in Germany, even pretty well-paid businessmen often are totally happy go to work just with a bicycle. In *ex-CCCP-not-very-wealthy-place* it is seen as absolutely essential to go all the time in a Porsche Cayenne"
"Taxpayer funded"
Most car manufacturers enjoy massive tax breaks, protective tariffs, subsidies and outright cash handouts from governments. This shouldn't be treated any differently.
"... the Model S door handles: they sit flush with the car body, then rise with a tap of the fingertip."
Very neat - but it would be interesting to see the circumvention method when they get frozen in winter.
Bigger Picture
There's a lot of EV haters, but it's important to remember a few things, if you can get past the weird publishing schedules that US magazines have.
1. Cars over here are not efficient, typically. Sure, I'm in Texas, so my baseline is not the same as California for example, but if something gets more than 15mpg here, it's a good deal. Having a car that goes like stink, has a rating of 89mpg and range comparable with many cars (i.e. M5) is still an amazing design feat.
2. Tesla has a loan from the DoE. A loan, by definition, will be paid back. Musk has confirmed this. The amount was trivial compared to the money invested by the US government in GM.
3. The Model S, in the Performance guise, is in the same price range as an M5, S7, E63 AMG etc etc. Sure, it's not a car for everyone, but it's priced comparably. The GenIII model, which is currently in development, is expected to be a 3-Series class car. This is new technology. It's not cheap. It'll become cheap through mass adoption. give it time.
4. It's not a 'vanity project'. Musk invested huge amounts of his personal wealth to keep the company going a couple of years ago. Is SpaceX also a vanity project? These are all high-tech, high-glamour projects, but that doesn't make them any less significant.
Slate them all you want, it's still the car on the top of my buy list even ahead of the Nissan GT-R.
When you live in a city where you can't go outside without getting a face full of black smoke every single day and the constant noise of engines running around your head. Electrics seems like a god's gift.
Not to mention the fact that the cost I save in petrol pays for the car itself within 10 years (that's assuming petrol prices are stagnent - so in reality I might even get my money back in 6-8 years).
Plus car tax is much cheaper. I also feel great when I support just cause, and I think a company who's been trying to spearhead a major change in an established cartel like industry for the betterment of mankind is a just cause.
Damn I want one today. That's the only problem I have with Tesla, I don't want to make a reservation I want to go to a shop, drive one away.
I do not care really
I just want one.
Mainly for playing Angry Birds on that bloody great screen when stuck in traffic :D
Touchscreen
There's a very good reason why other cars have buttons instead of a huge touchscreen.
Physical controls give tactile feedback, and can be operated by the driver by feel, without the user needing to look at the controls. This is why temperature knobs are better than digital buttons in climate control systems, for example: I can FEEL what temp I have just set, rather than having to look down to a readout.
Controlling the majority of in car systems using a touchscreen? Dangerous. Give me a switch, knob or toggle button, please.
Fossil burner brigade makes me laugh...
The flames here against this car suggests we have many of the passive aggressive persuasion on this flavour of the intertubes.
It's resistance to change. Most on here work in the vanguard of tech change. But when Elon suggests there is possibly, maybe, a better way to transport rich people you get "I bought my old v8 really cheaply...".
To misquote Obama, "we have less horses now too". Can't we start discussing the pros and cons of an electric model just like we do with diesel/petrol/hybrid...?
Get used to electric cars. You don't have to own one ever, but some of us might chose to.
Rarest of things - a good looking American car
It's like Mr Mondeo met Ms Jaguar.
Roll your own?
There are plenty of Madza RX8s with blown rotary engines to be had for peanuts at the moment. They're a car that is typically cosseted and revered as you'd expect a proud owner of a $40k sports car to, so finding one otherwise mint is no problem. A straight swap of the engine with an equally compact motor and kitting it out with a bulk order of 20k mobile phone batteries should be onto a winner IMHO.
Oh, and a fondleslab in the place where the radio goes. It's a wonder there's not a kit available yet.
Drowning in humbugs
There's a whole heap of grumpy naysayers here. This is quite clearly the best electric car ever to be sold. In any reasonable sense, this is competitive in its chosen range of premium sports saloons in terms of price, weight, looks, performance and range between stops.
Tesla are even doing it right - sell this in a big, premium car first; charging the prices that Nissan do for their Leaf is daft because it's hugely uncompetitive in the size bracket it sits in. There's a reason tech innovations tend to come in first in the largest, most premium models, but the most part of the automotive industry seems to have forgotten this.
No, there's nothing much wrong with the car - the problem is the infrastructure. The model I'd like to see is the "better place" battery-swapping filling station. Maybe slightly more realistic in terms of investment would be points that could charge the car to over 200 miles range in less than 20 minutes.
A comprehensive network of either of these would be my tipping point for adoption, so long as you could show me that total cost of ownership and usage over 5 years would be no greater than the IC alternative. Do that, and in 4 years time I'll buy a second hand one for about 25% of its original retail price, like I have done with my current V8 Jag, bought at 4 years old.
I'll not mention the touchscreen, in the full anticipation that it'll go the way of the quartic steering wheel 'ere long.
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