back to article Tesla fingers former Gigafactory hand as alleged blueprint-leaking sabotage mastermind

Tesla has sued a bloke it claims was behind an effort to sabotage the electric car maker by leaking its confidential blueprints. A complaint [PDF] lodged with the Nevada US District Court today names Martin Tripp, a former technician at the Tesla Nevada Gigafactory plant, as the alleged culprit behind a string of hacking and …

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  1. NoneSuch Silver badge

    Note that Tesla wants direct access to search his various items and not a Police agency.

    Let's hope that motion gets squashed.

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      That's actually a pretty standard part of the discovery process.

      1. Eddy Ito

        Yep, it's a civil action not a criminal action so the police aren't involved.

      2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

        Civil discovery process?

        Soo.. How's that work? Civil lawsuits could be decidely uncivil, and people's computers may contain a lot of sensitive personal information that's unrelated to the complaint. So who gets to fish? ie is that a semi-neutral party, or is your computer handed over to the plaintiff's lawyers, and potentially the plaintiff. That could be embarassing, or just inconvenient if it's used to deny someone access to their computer(s) whilst discovery is ongoing. Which can be bad enough in criminal cases given the time it can take for forensics to come back.

        1. papapavvv11
          Boffin

          Re: Civil discovery process?

          During this kind of order, a "neutral" third-party (lawyer or audit firm) will review the evidence seized to make sure nothing pertaining to attorney-client privilege is accessed by the plaintiff. The defendant can refuse to give access to his computers, but by doing so exposes himself to being charged with contempt. See Anton Piller order for more info.

    2. deevee

      looking forward to see Tripp counter-suing Tesla for defamation :)

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Chris Tierney

      Computer forensics

      If this plaintiff is half as smart with I.T. as they say he is then surely they already know that any incriminating evidence is already gone and has been replaced with deep fakes of Elin Musk pole dancing with a Falcon 9 stage 1.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is this to deflect from the fact that the Tesla Autopilot is a potential deathtrap or is Musk now a fully paid up member of the David Icke paranoia forum ?

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

      Everyone else making an EV would be glad to get rid of that pesky startup with the loudmouth CEO that keeps one-upping them and making them look bad.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        >Everyone else making an EV

        The loudmouth CEO who's failing to meet production targets and fits cars with the flaky ELON9000 Autopilot that tries to murder you, open the car door please ELON.

        It's just all too convenient given the autopilot and production woes.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Everyone else making an EV would be glad to get rid of that pesky startup with the loudmouth CEO that keeps one-upping them and making them look bad.

        I very much doubt that. Other car makers are delighted that Musk is learning all the hard lessons for them, pioneering a market that's currently unprofitable, and gaining notoriety for his emotive response to the inevitable problems of a very steep learning curve. If Ford, say, had thrown this volume of money and resource into a production EV, then all major competitors would have been compelled to do the same. Whilst an upstart is doing it, they can do what they're doing, which is much slower and more measured progress.

        If and when EVs become the main choice of vehicle, Tesla's early and convincing lead will be worth little. Look at the all the internet search engine pioneers - their various early leads merely paved the way for Google. De Havilland flew the world's first passenger jet airliner, but it was other firms who now rule the airline market. IBM launched the first personal computer and aren't even in that line of business any more. You can argue who invented the smartphone and when, but it certainly wasn't Apple or Samsung who now dominate. And so I could go on. The point is that first movers and pioneers often do well to start with, but rarely survive in the longer term - any good bits will be picked off the carcase and reused, but if Tesla is still an independent car maker in 2030 I'll be amazed.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Tesla is still an independent car maker"

          Well, this sums up the whole issue. People keep putting Tesla into a Car manufacture when it's an Energy & Lifestyle company that doesn't fit into any financial analysis box. Hence they don't understand.

          Tesla does produce cars. But, it also produces Gig amounts of batteries that are managed by IP software that beats the competition. This alone would be a nice business.

          It also has a Roof Solar Tile that it can't again make enough off. Yet another long queue!

          It also has a batteries Tesla PowerWall 2. Despite not making Home use worth it. Rather a lot of Pizza pad have used it to reduce their costs of connection to the Grid. Several other Commercial projects are also being deployed. 1100 last count.

          It's associated company happens to be able to put a completely separate Mesh Internet up into the sky which will be accessible to everyone on the planet!

          It's like saying Amazon will disappear by 2030!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          " Other car makers are delighted that Musk is learning all the hard lessons for them"

          Other car makers are already building electric cars. You're far more likely to see a Nissan Leaf than you are a Tesla, as Nissan sells a lot more of them than Tesla ever has.

          Not sure why people are upvoting conspiracy and downvoting people who point out the facts - "big car" and "big oil" aren't the reasons why Tesla is failing to meet production targets, and making poor quality cars - it's self inflicted. British Leyland would be proud...

          Enron Musk would do well to actually listen to Toyota on how to mass produce a quality car, instead of ignoring them and failing to produce anywhere close to the same amount of cars that GM-Toyota did in that same plant, 20 years ago.

          1. Mahhn

            I see Teslas

            "You're far more likely to see a Nissan Leaf than you are a Tesla"

            I see at least 2 tesla every day on my way home and to work. Yet to get one of them to race me. If I catch them on the highway I have a chance (60-120mph) from a dead stop they will beat me off the line - if the driver has enough balls to push it hard that is.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC - what is certain is that he is member #1 of the Elon Musk Fan Club. It would seem that he is unraveling with he recent behaviour at press conferences.

      As for people being out to get him - no. Observing that he has clay feet does not mean he is being attacked. To date the overwhelming coverage of the man has been positive to the point of sycophancy, so any real analysis jars with the worshipful regard expected.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Is this Mr Tripp posting anonymously?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It appears that Musk is seeing the possible bursting of the electric car bubble since to run an electric car you need plenty of cheap, reliable electricity, something you don't get with solar and wind (solar, no sun no power and windmills don't provide power when the wind isn't blowing).

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      I get plenty of cheap, reliable electricity with my local nuclear power plant. Plus it lets me say my Zero is nuclear-powered!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        >I get plenty of cheap, reliable electricity with my local nuclear power plant.

        Which one would that be: Three Mile Island, Fukushima or Chernobyl ?

        1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

          cheap, reliable electricity with my local nuclear power plant.

          Well, it certainly won't be from Hinkley Point C - the "strike price" has well and truly shafted the consumer even before the things have been built. Not to worry - the government gets another chance to shaft the consumers with Sizewell C

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Well, it certainly won't be from Hinkley Point C - the "strike price" has well and truly shafted the consumer even before the things have been built. Not to worry - the government gets another chance to shaft the consumers with Sizewell C

            If EDF go ahead, which isn't yet clear. But government have made sure of failure and high cost nuclear power because they've already promised a strike price of around £75 MWh (plus inflation) for the Hitachi proposal at Wylfa. Kepco will expect similar treatment for Moorside (Windscale). The Chinese paymasters for Hinkley have made it clear that the money was only forthcoming if they could build their own design variant at Bradwell.

            Which means that the UK's new nuclear fleet will be made up at least four different hugely subsidised designs, two of which have never been built before, and the other which has never been built in Europe before. Whilst the Areva EPR is under construction in Europe, neither of the six-ten year late ones at Oikliuoto and Flamanville have generated power yet. The only company with proven international expertise in building working nuclear reactors at reasonable cost is Kepco, who should have been the first and only choice for UK nuclear power - but its now too late to rectify the compounded twenty year bungling of Britain's civil servants.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              The nuclear power stations that have been built before are the ones that shouldn't be considered. Using the criteria that only installed designs should be considered means that there will be no advancements in nuclear plant designs. I'd like to see a modern LFTR plant put into operation. There has never been a commercial one of those built and the last test model that was run didn't have a turbine attached so it just made heat and naught else.

              For nuclear power to be viable, there has to be improvements made to the designs with preference for ones that can "burn down" existing nuclear waste that has been generate thus far with the old designs.

            2. Alan Brown Silver badge

              " the UK's new nuclear fleet will be made up at least four different hugely subsidised designs, two of which have never been built before, and the other which has never been built in Europe before. "

              The existing UK nuclear fleet is uneconomic because virtually every single plant is a different design.

              In any case, PWR/BWR reactors are inefficient due to low temperature input to the turbines.

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            "Not to worry - the government gets another chance to shaft the consumers with Sizewell C"

            Compared with what "renewables" producers are being paid, those nuke plants are going to be selling bargain basement priced electrickery.

            Coal, oil and gas generation is going away. Renewables can match their current production but they can't meet the increases that are required to replace gas/oil heating, internal combustion engines and industrial processes such as cement making.

            1. H in The Hague

              "Compared with what "renewables" producers are being paid, those nuke plants are going to be selling bargain basement priced electrickery."

              Don't think that is correct. Here in NL the government used to subsidise offshore wind energy. But the new wind farms no longer need that subsidy for generation (think there is still some support for the link to shore). And in my view one of the key problems with nuclear is that eventually there will be very high decomissioning costs, which might well fall on the taxpayer :(

              1. Alan Brown Silver badge

                "Here in NL the government used to subsidise offshore wind energy. But the new wind farms no longer need that subsidy for generation"

                The difference between direct and indirect subsidies is only in the visibility of how it's paid.

                Forcing gridcos to pay stupidly high feedin tarriffs - that's a subsidy

                Forcing gridcos to take renewables energy as first choice - even when there's more generation than demand - that's a subsidy too

                Forcing gridcos to eat the entire cost of having to overlay the distribution network in order to handle power flows changing direction without much notice - another subsidy

                Forcing gridcos to build transmission lines to the generation point - another subsidy (normal producers have to pay for those lines themselves)

                When I see renewables operators being paid the same bulk rates as other generators then I'll believe that subsides are mostly gone.

                Apart from the above, some of those rules contribute to grid instability. The infamous South Australian statewide blackouts occured due to dropoffs in wind generation happening, but the weather forecasts being for a resumption in 4-6 hours - not enough time for a backup gas power station to repay its startup costs, let alone the hourly ones, before they would have been forced to turn the plant off again - so the power generator declined to fire it up and the state went dark for 6 hours.

                In order to prevent repeats, SA installed Elon's battery farm, but even that isn't enough for prolonged wind outages, so agreements have been made for backup operators to be paid well enough to justify turning the plants on - but a plant that's only run for a couple of hundred hours a year still requires maintenance and effectively produces power costing dollars per kWh instead of a few cents.

                All this means that renewables actually cost about 10 times what "normal" generation does - which is ok for a peak-load generation plant but utter bollocks for your economics if they're supposed to be baseline.

                If you think rolling blackouts won't happen here, you're being naive. Yes, renewables can just about replace existing electricity generation, but there's no capacity left to cater to the increases coming from decarbonising transport, heating, etc. Electricity generation only accounts for 25-35% of carbon emissions and generation capacity has to be sized for peak loads, not average ones.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Which one would that be: Three Mile Island, Fukushima or Chernobyl ?

          This person does have a point, what if nuclear power stations had been targeted by Al Qaeda during 9/11 instead of the Pentagon, the WTC and the failed attack on Capitol Hill ? Hate to think of a plane crashing into a sodium cooled FBR and the subsequent sodium fire. Let's hope fusion gets perfected as there are just too many risks with fission.

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Chances are that the nuclear plant would have held up very well to an airplane crash. The containment buildings are designed with that in mind. Search YouTube for video of crash tests where a fighter plane was flung at a mock up of a containment building wall. It's impressive. The World Trade Center buildings were an easy, high profile target for inexperienced pilots to hit. Washington DC might have been too hard of a nut to crack, though with the strike on the Pentagon, maybe it wouldn't have been.

            I don't like Sodium cooled reactors for the same reason you are pointing out. Leaking hot Sodium metal is a massive hazard. There is a reactor in Japan where they dropped a crane into the Sodium pool. That spelled the end of that reactor and I think it is still just sitting there waiting to be cleaned up.

          2. Alan Johnson

            Plan crashing into nuclear reactor fear

            "what if nuclear power stations had been targeted by Al Qaeda during 9/11 instead of the Pentagon, the WTC and the failed attack on Capitol Hill ? Hate to think of a plane crashing into a sodium cooled FBR and the subsequent sodium fire."

            The design specification is for the containment building to survive an airliner crashed directly into the containment building whether it is sodium or water cooled doesn't really matter.

          3. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

            Re: Let's hope fusion gets perfected as there are just too many risks with fission.

            And yet, despite hundreds of nuke power plants around the world, somehow we're still alive and not glowing piles of radioactive dust.

          4. Alan Brown Silver badge

            "what if nuclear power stations had been targeted by Al Qaeda during 9/11 instead of the Pentagon, the WTC and the failed attack on Capitol Hill "

            Not much. Even if the containment building had been breached the reactor pressure vessel inside is quite small and well protected.

            'It's almost as if they were designed to withstand an airliner crashing into them from the outset.....'

            "Hate to think of a plane crashing into a sodium cooled FBR and the subsequent sodium fire."

            Sodium FBRs have a habit of catching fire without needing any assistance from external factors, Look at Monju. However as they don't need to be designed to cater to a steam explosion the containment buildings are much smaller and even tougher than PWR reactors.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There are plenty of other cheap sources of renewable electricity available other than just wind and solar. But even without those, when was the last time an entire day didn't have the wind blowing and didn't see any sun somewhere within 1000km from you?

      Electric cars aren't a bubble, and they won't be disappearing any time soon.

      1. c1ue

        Yes and no.

        More accurately, there *were* lots of alternative energy generation before the cryptocurrency miners burned it all up.

      2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

        ...There are plenty of other cheap sources of renewable electricity available other than just wind and solar. But even without those, when was the last time an entire day didn't have the wind blowing and didn't see any sun somewhere within 1000km from you?...

        Er. no. Cheap, yes. 'Renewable', no.

        It is common for the whole of Europe to have still periods of several days duration. And the last time there wasn't any sun within 621 miles of me was last night....

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Def: clearly you have never read...

        https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/why-britain-can-never-rely-on-wind-power/

        Lulls in wind occur over large geographical regions on a pretty regular basis. We've known about this for quite a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doldrums. Winter high pressures over the UK often combine little to no wind over a large area, with much reduced solar power from the very short days. For grid quantities of power, batteries are currently not viable, and pump storage is difficult to scale even with the right terrain.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Def: clearly you have never read...

          When the UK can't generate enough of its own power, what's stopping it from importing solar energy from southern Europe/north Africa, wind energy from Denmark, nuclear energy from France, or hydro energy from Norway?

          Small minded Brexiteers notwithstanding, of course. ;)

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: @Def: clearly you have never read...

            "what's stopping it from importing solar energy from southern Europe/north Africa, wind energy from Denmark, nuclear energy from France, or hydro energy from Norway?"

            Transmission losses.

            You can minimise them by moving to HVDC, but you still can't go much past 1,000,000 volts without getting all kinds of corona effects along the line. You can't make the lines heavier to carry more current as that means closer spaced towers and each tower is a leakage point for your power feed. You really don't want your corona to turn into an arc with DC because you have to shutdown the entire feed to stop it (DC arcs are self-sustaining)

            Underwater cables are even worse and the largest undersea connectors anywhere are only about 2GW

            As for north Africa: There's a shedload of potential demand building up in the countries where it would be generated and the inhabitants won't take kindly to "new colonialists" shipping it off for consumption elsewhere.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There are these fantastic things which can store electricity so you can store it up when the sun is shining or when demand is well below supply from your nuclear power station and then use it later. I think they're called 'accumulators' or something like that. I've heard rumours that these new-fangled electric cars may contain them: I'd assumed they were loke trams used to be and ran from overhead wites but apparently not so.

    4. Dave Harvey

      Batteries in cars

      Actually, if someone can get the meters and APIs properly organised (and I don't mean the mess that is the current "smart-meter" roll-out), then electric cars are JUST what's needed to help balance the grid when fed largely from intermittent sources. This is because 90% of the time, an electric car owner, charging at home, doesn't NEED to be charging it at specific times - (s)he simply needs it to average enough charge to handle the daily commute over the course of a week - if it happens not to get charge on a windless night, but then gets a charge instead the following windy/bright evening then that's fine. Yes, there are times (before a long trip) when the car MUST be charged, and this is not a panacea, but having a large number of plugged in cars, READY to charge but not demanding it is a great way to both reduce consumption at times of peak stress on the system, and also to provide a useful "sink" to take the energy when the other option would be curtailment of generation.

      1. DCFusor

        Re: Batteries in cars

        Yup. I'm fully off-grid other than internet and drive a 2012 Volt, which I bought new and which has never been charged from the grid, though I have used maybe ~100 gal of gas in its life so far. Home solar is a famine and flood situation as many love to point out (sour grapes? The flood part is nice!) and the car adds to my serious set of home batteries (60kwh nominal but we don't use all that)- I added a way for it to charge the homestead set in emergencies.

        The setup works great, and I'm glad I "overpaid" for this engineering marvel from...GM of all people. Bob Lutz, who ran the project at GM admitted, in a Charlie Rose interview with Elon Musk, that Elon's vision and progress was what drove GM to make a car they'd never have made otherwise, and I'm glad they did - Bob is a car guy (Viper while at Chysler, Vette at GM) - and the Volt is a really good car-guy car.

        Which they won't make anymore because it costs too much to have it all. But it is nice to have it all, make no mistake.

        Sadly it angers all purists. It runs a gasoline engine as required (I manage to almost never do it past having broken it in, but it's nice to know it's there...) - so costs extra. It has limited range, which doesn't matter much because it has a gas engine, but the electric range is such that even in the boonies, where it's a 26 mile round trip to the beer store - I can hot-rod the thing there and back all I want..

        And it can be either a parallel or serial hybrid. What heresy!

        What it isn't is a glorified golf cart as a few rally wannabe young'ns have found out to their dismay. These mountain roads where I live are quite a lot of fun.

        Thanks Elon for risking it all on your vision to make this happen, even if I didn't buy one of yours. I like that hybrid for now, as it's also a generator that can back up my home power - and drive itself to the gas station to refill if needed; I added an inverter to it to make this happen - other engineers know, it ain't yours till the warranty is voided.

      2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

        Re: Batteries in cars

        ...This is because 90% of the time, an electric car owner, charging at home, doesn't NEED to be charging it at specific times - (s)he simply needs it to average enough charge to handle the daily commute over the course of a week - if it happens not to get charge on a windless night, but then gets a charge instead the following windy/bright evening then that's fine....

        if it doesn't charge on a windless night, then you don't go to work in the morning. Welcome to the Green world of unreliable inefficiency....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Batteries in cars

          if it doesn't charge on a windless night, then you don't go to work in the morning. Welcome to the Green world of unreliable inefficiency....

          There are a number of Leccy Suppliers who only sell Renewable Leccy. The bigger ones have sources of power from many places around the country. This is either wind or solar or Hydro generation. I don't think that there has been a case where one huge great high pressure has covered the whole of the UK including the wind power generation that is miles out to sea so that there is no wind or solar power being generated.

          However there are solutions to even that case. I'll be installing 34kW of Battery in my garage next month. That will allow me to overcome the worse case scenario you paint.

          The operatiors of the grid (National Grid) think that having local storage is the way of the future.

          34kW will run my home in Winter for more than a week. That means I could go off grid between Christmas and New Year and not use any grid power even if it is renewable.

          Slagging off any new tech is a quick way to get upvotes but it won't stop the way things are going forward. Only yesterday, there were moves in Westminster to bring forward the end of ICE cars from 2040 to 2030. London is expanding its ULEZ out to the North and South Circular. Other cities are going to follow suit. The days of using the petrol/diesel engine for private transportation is coming to an end.

          That is going to happen. No sarcastic comments or a hundred(or more) downvotes of this post will stop that.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Batteries in cars

            I'll be installing 34kW of Battery in my garage next month.

            I do hope the cost of that is coming out of your pocket and not the pockets of everyone else via subsidies.

            Regarding number of Leccy Suppliers who only sell Renewable Leccy do they also have their own power grid to transmit the power to those that are buying it because if they don't then their statement is a load of hooey and the power you buy from them is most probably from a gas turbine power station.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Batteries in cars

              Regarding number of Leccy Suppliers who only sell Renewable Leccy do they also have their own power grid to transmit the power to those that are buying it because if they don't then their statement is a load of hooey and the power you buy from them is most probably from a gas turbine power station.

              It isn't a load of hooey.

              Say a company like Ecotricity puts 1GW of power into the grid then those electrons are actually available to anyone using power not just Ecotricity customers but what they put in is metered.

              Then you take some power from the grid and again, it is metered.

              You pay your generator for supplying power to the grid (and thus to you).

              Yes, the electrons that I'm using to post this reply might have been coming from a CCGT station but the electrons put into the grid by Ecotricity (other renewable suppliers are available) could have been used by you in posting what I'm replying to. It does not matter. What matters is that the source of our electricity is becoming more and more renewable. According to Gridwatch at the present time some 44% of the electricity being used in the UK is generated from renewable sources.

              I'm sure that any of the renewable energy companies would love to explain to you how the grid works and how you as a consumer can use and pay for renewable leccy. Even National Grid have an explanation if you care to look for it.

              No separate 'renewable energy' electric grid is needed.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Batteries in cars

                According to Gridwatch at the present time some 44% of the electricity being used in the UK is generated from renewable sources.

                At the time of daylight and year when energy demand is lowest and renewable power output happens to be flattered by brisk winds and sunshine. Conversely last week we had a couple of days when wind power generated nothing.

                Unfortunately because of the intermittency, we still need all the conventional back up. So all you save is a small amount of relatively cheap fuel, but you still incur all the capital and O&M costs, plus the costs of the "renewables". So the idea of the system being somehow suitable for renewables is bollocks. And in terms of "no separate renewable electric grid is needed", I'd just point out as one example of the huge and costly modifications needed, the near one billion quid spent on the Beauly-Denny transmission link for the sole purpose of shoving wind generated electricity from the north of Scotland to the middle of Scotland. That was a straight subsidy for the windfarms, with the cost recovered from electricity customers. There's plenty of other examples of how the existing grid isn't suitable for the weak and intermittent output of renewables

                1. Alan Brown Silver badge

                  Re: Batteries in cars

                  > we still need all the conventional back up. So all you save is a small amount of relatively cheap fuel, but you still incur all the capital and O&M costs, plus the costs of the "renewables".

                  As carbon-emitting storage becomes steadliy more proscribed (and it will. Look at what's happening int he Laptev Sea), that backup generation will have to become nuclear - which currently doesn't load follow very well.

                  Moving to molten salt systems makes load following trivial, but at that point the renewables become surplus to requirements because MSR designs should produce power at ~1/4 the cost of renewables.

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Batteries in cars

                  So what's your answer then? Keep digging up the coal? Keep building the nukes?

          2. umacf24

            Re: Batteries in cars

            I assume you mean 34 kWhr. That's about five pounds-worth of electricity and looking at Powerwall prices you'll be paying something like ten or fifteen thousand pounds for an installation with a twenty-year life, which seems -- high.

            But even if you fit that battery, the only way you can be running a house in winter on five kWhr per day is by a) freezing or b) not being in it, or c) heating it by burning something -- gas/oil/logs/peat/furniture. You certainly won't be charging your car from that battery.

            Electric cars are great, part of the solution, and electrification of everything -- with its easy interchangeability of primary sources -- is the way to go. But the focus then has to be low-carbon primary energy with power for to support heating, trains, workplace, vehicle charging, synthetic fuels etc consumption. That puts us into the kW+ per person range and the only practical way forward there is nuclear (and no batteries are needed.)

        2. Dave Harvey

          Re: Batteries in cars

          if it doesn't charge on a windless night, then you don't go to work in the morning

          How to totally miss the point of a post!

          Average UK commute is <10 miles each way (mine is about 15 and YMMV). Most EVs now have a range >100 miles, some 2-3x that, so a reasonably (90% optimal normal) charged car will do most/all of the week on one charge, so topping up as and when works fine.

          I barely charge mine during the week and tend to "fill up" off the home solar at weekends - what's your EV experience?

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