Elon Musk pledges transcontinental car juicers by end of year Elon Musk says Tesla is tripling the number of electric recharging stations available this year, with enough installed to enable coast-to-coast road trips by the end of the year. Speaking at the D11 conference, Musk said his company has perfected a new "supercharging" technology that will enable faster fill-up times for its …
The Roadster battery cost $36,000 today and has a projected 7 year life span, so if nothing changes and you stick that money under your mattress (rather than somewhere that pays interest) that's a tad over $5k per year. You can however pretty much guarantee that in 7 years time there will be cheaper replacements. You also need to remember that your petrol car needs replacement parts (of which it has many more, and needs more servicing) and depreciates also.
I've no idea where you got that second number from.
Interestingly, Roadsters owners report a much lower degradation rate than the quotes spec.
Which is what you would expect - you would leave a considerable margin in a product.
The reason for this is that the Tesla battery system uses non-bleeding edge cells and is very nice to them - monitored, controlled charging, heating/cooling to keep the temperature stable etc.
Most peoples experience of Li batteries is in mobile phones and laptops. The car equivalent of how they treat the battery would be to empty your radiator and do doughnuts and smoke your tires every day.....
The working class.
Taxing carbon-spitting cars is all very well, but most people can't afford to buy a new car, nor a new electric car, and the second hand market of sub-£3k cars that most real, non-highly paid, financed-up-to-the-hilt people in the first world survive on won't have electric cars in it (that are a realistic proposal - IE aren't public beta tests with unsupported tech in them, due to the change in pace of technology) for another twenty years.
Otherwise, much as though I love my popping and farting little shed of doom, I tend to agree - once the economics of scale and tech viability come into line, even as a 'petrol'head, I'd have no issue with 'leccy cars, as long as they drive as nicely as their equivelant petrol-fuelled brethren.
All that torque from idle - yum.
Steven R
Unsustainable businesses? Let's have a look shall we? Paypal - world's largest online payment service. SpaceX - world's first commercial space shipping company, with contracts with NASA and a pile of private companies. Tesla - a company that has paid back all its government loan money and is making a profit. SolarCity a company with investors ranging from some of the US's largest banks to Google.
Now, tell me, which of these businesses is unsustainable, and which got 'free money' from the government to increase his bank account?
All the money he made at PayPal is gone. And he's had a good number of companies go bankrupt that nobody talks about. Neither Tesla nor SolarCity would even be running now without heavy government subsidies. Maybe not directly to his company [although word is that's how he "paid off" his loan early (even though he has larger loans still outstanding)], but certainly to the purchasers of his electric vehicles.
And while this might be a news flash for you, NASA is not a private entity.
Maybe he does win. But never overlook the very high risk businesses in which he is engaged. I haven't played at his money level, but I have successfully engaged in high risk undertakings (unfortunately never for my own personal gain). When I did, I never pretended those activities were anything other than very high risk.
People keep saying things can't be done, yet those like Elon Musk have this habit of going ahead and just doing things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but if humans are to have any future at all, it is those who take a chance and actually try something who will secure it.
Where would we be now if the early explorers had listened when they were told they were going to fall off the edge of the world? What if nobody had tried to make ships out of iron (everyone knows iron sinks)?
The principal objection to Elon Musk is that he portrays himself as a champion of capitalism, yet his business requires large amounts of tax-payers' money to operate. Take away the money that the State of California gives to every purchaser of a Tesla Model S (these are people who can already afford a $50,000 car, by the way), and you find that Tesla is losing $10,000 a vehicle.
And how did Tesla turn a profit? They sold environmental credits to traditional auto-makers. The money for these credits came from... taxpayers again.
He's fattening up the goose, sitting back, and waiting for someone like Ford to buy it. Typical Silicon Valley "business" model, just applied to a new sector.
>his business requires large amounts of tax-payers' money to operate.
As opposed to the loans, credits, and tax breaks that traditional car companies get.
>Typical Silicon Valley "business" model, just applied to a new sector.
Typical real life "business" model, just as applied to any other sector.
There, fixed that for you. This whole farce is part of a larger problem of trying to provide 'jobs' which even the right-wing is a part of in way that is hilariously inefficient compared to generous jobless benefits and higher taxes. I call this an implicit accounting fraud. Unlike the tax credit thing, that is just outright stupid.
People fear what they don't know, and thus change. Most of the haters see themselves as smarter than actuality and wonder why those with more drive and execution succeed while they do not. It is simple human nature to see oneself in a more positive light while diminishing the abilities of imagined opponents. Over-reaction in both directions from the mean is the common response instead of a dispassionate assessment of costs and benefits. The human mind makes up the reasoning after the fact once a decision has been made (often while the conscious mind thinks itself to still be deliberating). Most people are not conscious of this phenomena, hence Einstein's oft misquoted comments on the illusive nature of time, space, and reality.
Everything in life is a tradeoff, some just calculate and estimate said tradeoffs better, usually because they are not constrained by limited minds and lemming-like behavior. This is not to say I endorse Musk or his ventures, but it is interesting to watch and I certainly would like to see him make it work. Naturally such my-way-or-the-highway approaches are the domain of both ends of the political-economic spectrum and are prone to religious fervor. Like religious movements past, eventually such self-wounding behavior will fail to sustain the gap between reality and perception and the costs borne by the believers will be too high to ignore for most. Many of the leading proponents will double down, a classic example of the gambler's fallacy.
Warren Buffett has made the point about transport that all automobile manufacturers' profits summed since the invention of the car itself are negative. A few may have survived and made money while most have lead to spectacular destruction of wealth, all the meanwhile even the most profitable enterprises have horrific returns on invested capital. The same applies for air and rail travel. This, however, does not mean that there are not some very powerful economic incentives to keep the status quo for those in charge of it as they are rarely the ones leading the new scheme.
"hater", Prop. Noun, often used by the under-educated (usually teenagers) in order to attempt to put down actual educated people (usually adults).
Translation of 'hater' into English: "Everybody who doesn't agree with what I have faith in, despite the fact that I (me, personally) actually have faith in the belief of the given faith, and can't actually offer up a real, honest scientific argument confirming it's existence."
Alternative translation: "I hate adults. They don't know anything!".
HTH, HAND.
Choose whichever translations you wish, the context is clear and written in a neutral tone. I have heard more than enough people of all ages and educations use the word to mean a variety of things. There are a lot of people having quite strong reactions beyond how much it may actually impact them. I'd have to say, the colloquialism fits quite well here as El Reg forums are hardly formal writing.
Perhaps you mistake my use of religious to mean spiritual or belief in god. It is nothing of that sort. The belief actions I am talking about pertain to this world and our actions in it. When people make false idols in the here and now. I have no sides either in this electric car good-bad thing or matters of spirituality, I do, however observe frequent emotional reactions by those with imagined stakes in the matter.
For the record even though I like to see Musk succeed, I am skeptical of electric vehicles and this is the position I have always had. As an investor, I wouldn't touch such a venture. I could list a lot of scientific and economic details, but quite frankly, that too would be bullshit to justify a gut position.
>Alternative translation: "I hate adults. They don't know anything!".
This is true, if only I would listen to my teenage self, I would be so far ahead, unfortunately we lost him a couple decades ago. Man that kid was sharp, but did he really believe what he thought he did?
That should probably be "I hate people who exhibit adult behavior."
I've known people 20 years older than me (I may not be over the hill, but I'm no spring chicken either) who exhibit behavior worse than your average teenager. Conversely, I've known some teenagers who exhibited more mature behavior than your average 35 year old.
Fossil fuels aren't punitively taxed, says Elon Musk.
In the UK we pay 58p/litre in fuel tax every time we fill up and 22p VAT on top of that - over half the total cost of the fuel. But we don't travel significantly less than Americans, even though we have a smaller country.
He also sets up a false construct - electricity v fossil fuels.
Electricity is made from fossil fuels - oil or coal fired power stations.
And because of inefficiencies in the grid and production, only 1/4 of the power produced reaches the socket.
Thus electric cars use almost four times the fossil fuel which petrol or diesel ones do.
That's not even counting the fact that electric cars last, on average, half as long as petrol/diesel ones as the batteries die and aren't economic to replace after 8-10 years. Since 80% of the environmental damage a car does is in making it, not using it, that's another big hit for the environment.
Yet Americans seem to believe all his stuff. Frightening.
Electricity is made from fossil fuels is it? So those solar panels all over the Mojave desert in the US don't generate anything, the wind turbines don't generate anything? Hinkley point doesn't generate anything? How about the Hoover dam?
The losses through transmission are a *lot* less than you quote. For example, in the UK, when you take into account the grid, and distribution to consumers themselves, the loss averages out at about 7.7% using 2005 figures. A coal plant has a thermal efficiency of about 33%. A combined-cycle gas plant is about 55%.
Battery technology progresses, so in 8 years, the cost of a replacement battery will be significantly less than the original cost. The cost of repairing conventional engines is significant after the first few years. Parts are needed constantly etc...
Your entire argument is wrong, simply put.
Well, the top Google reference says US electrical production figures are:
Coal 37%
Natural Gas 30%
Nuclear 19%
Hydropower 7%
Other Renewable 5%
Biomass 1.42%
Geothermal 0.41%
Solar 0.11%
Wind 3.46%
Petroleum 1%
Other Gases < 1%
So, yes, the shorthand reference would be 'No they don't.' More to the point, even with more real US dollars having been thrown at the so-called renewable energy source in the last 4 years than all of the rest of the electrical industry has over its lifetime they still make a negligible contribution and aren't likely to in my lifetime. And since the commie-green axis hates nukes, you don't get to count them with renewables.
> Electricity is made from fossil fuels - oil or coal fired power stations.
> And because of inefficiencies in the grid and production, only 1/4 of the power produced reaches the socket.
> Thus electric cars use almost four times the fossil fuel which petrol or diesel ones do.
Only if you have 100% efficient car engine. Actual fugues vary but 100% is certainly very wrong.
You've made other mistakes too, but this is the big one.
You're point about batteries is good though. Lets hope this one is solved quicker than the 100 years or so it took for cars to get as reliable as they are now.
What you need to talk about is the "well-to-wheels" cycle. Petrol doesn't just appear in petrol stations after all.
When that is considered, electric vehicles are the equivalent of high miles-per-gallon vehicles - a Tesla Model S get 89 mpg (equivalent), according to the US EPA and the Leaf gets 112 mpg
That's for charging of the US grid....
If gasoline were more heavily taxed, then the economic advantages of electric cars would win...well, that's true enough, but that's hardly an inherent economic advantage of the electric car. Government intervention, such as taxes, is what makes things happen in defiance of the laws of economics.
However, taxes that compensate for externalities are legitimate. Whether on putting carbon into the atmosphere by burning gasoline, or by burning coal, oil, or natural gas to generate electricity.
So, first, all the electric power generating capacity that isn't hydro or nuclear needs to be switched over, presumably to nuclear. Then we can start worrying about electric cars.
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