Tesla vs Media again as Model S craps out on journo - on the highway Californian electric car maker Tesla Motors - well known for tangling repeatedly with the BBC (and the Register) over coverage of battery vehicles which it did not deem positive enough - is now in a row with the New York Times after one of the paper's journalists wrote a stinging review of its new Model S. Tesla Model S sports …
Regardless of whatever a Tesla has or doesn't have under its hood, it's beginning to seem that El Reg has a bee under its bonnet about Tesla. How about not mentioning Tesla again until such time as it equals in performance and convenience a motor car running on fossil fuels? That should give us a rest of a couple of hundred years at least.
"Regardless of whatever a Tesla has or doesn't have under its hood, it's beginning to seem that El Reg has a bee under its bonnet about Tesla."
It's more that Lewis has a bee in his bonnet about anything vaguely green. Perhaps he was forced to eat sprouts as a child, or something.
"How about not mentioning Tesla again until such time as it equals in performance and convenience a motor car running on fossil fuels? That should give us a rest of a couple of hundred years at least."
What, you want it to be made slower?
Frankly, the performance is fine. It's just not suitable for long drives (which is more of a matter of trying to use the wrong tool for the job: No shit my screwdriver is crap at driving in nails!) and costs too much (more of an issue with production costs that will change with volume).
Mobile phones were shit all use without all the towers we have today and used to use car battery sized batteries. But we didn't decide to just give up on the idea: We developed it until it was practical and slowly built infrastructure.
don't tar EVs with the 'green' brush. These cars are engineering-led projects that seek to redefine the methods and materials used in creating personal transport. They're not for saving the planet, except insofar as more intelligent use of resources benefits us all. I would have thought that anyone with an interest in engineering and technological progress would value the work being done to commercialise EVs.
The battery technology simply isn't up to the job. Any scientist in the field will tell you that storing electricity is problematical and the energy density nowhere near that of fossil-fuel. Add to that the tendency for Lithium cells to behave badly at low (or high!) temperatures and you have major problems.
If the EV ever gains mass public acceptance, expect to see our city streets and motorways littered with dead cars and desperate travellers.
Whilst I have no objection to loaner demo's or rental cars having built in software, I do object to this damn stuff being present in a vehicle I actually possess title to.
A vehicle I owned back in Canada had seat-belt/crash bag electronics incorporated in it and the then Sergeant Cam Woolley, (retired since a new chief decided he was the only mouthpiece) of the Ontario Provincial Police, became aware of exculpatory evidence contained in these chips and he started reading these chips with his little goody box intended originally for mechanics.
Then some police forces started using them as proof of speeding, in other words, writing your own tickets.
I carefully excised my unit and placed it elsewhere in my SUV, leaving the original connector dangling and the device hooked up discretely with my wiring.
Presently there are masses of vehicles driving around with 'hidden' electronics, all busy recording your every vehicle activity - some even calling home via cell networks.
The public doesn't need any more Big Brother stuff, but it's good to see a NYT reporter caught out parsing his story - he should have known better.
If you intend to do crime, make sure you use an old banger or visit your friendly mechanic, first.
If its sitting in you car and can only be read after the fact with physical access, then it's hardly big brother-Ish. Now if it called the cops whilst you were speeding, that would be an issue.
But in either case, surely the problem is that you WERE speeding, not the manner in which it is proven?
My old Garmin portable GPS had a data field for registering the vehicle's peak speed. It kept registering numbers that I didn't like seeing, in case Plod wanted a look-see. So I took it on a commercial flight and it dutifully recorded "1025 km/h". So I left that peak speed reading in there for as long as I used it. It would have been amusing if Plod had asked for a look-see.
Not everyone has a driveway.
Take a city like Aberdeen. Many people have cars as the local bus service is a joke (as any company with a closed market and no competition becomes)
Nearly every home in the city centre is a flat, so no parking near your door.
A little further out, you get homes with small driveways, enough for one car, so your second car has to be petrol too.
Further out still and you get to the houses with more space and bigger driveways, but they are on the limit of how far you'd want to drive an electric car (especially in the winter when rush hour traffic will turn it into a portable heater, using up most of the battery when stationary)
I have an electric car(miev) which is great, and has performed in cold weather without a hitch, yes range goes down in the cold which is more down to the winter tyres and heating than battery performance. The battery warms up with use and you dont experience a big diff between 0 and -18 deg, but you really notice changing the tyres back to summer tyres and if you run the heater a lot. Anyway if your winter range is twice your commute round trip theres never an issue (people with electric cars still forget their laptop, need to go to collect sick children etc).
We didnt buy the leaf because its batteries need heating in order not to freeze solid in -18 or below from memory. If the car was stored outside in winter (norway) for longer than the battery can heat itself then kiss goodbye the warranty. To Nissans credit they were quite clear that the cars computer would tell on you, same as if you quick charge too much or basically dont follow the manual 100%.
Tesla appears to go a step further, the same logs that prove the journalist and top gear were sensationalising will be the ones used to deny your warranty claim.....
Musk has done well with SpaceX because he is competing against fossilized, political correct, unionized government funded companies that are very inefficient. And he has hired some really smart high performing rocket engineers. With that background it's easy to make big improvements. With Tesla he is competing against other free market well run companies so it's tough to improve on what their are doing.
tesla-the best car that taxpayer forced subsidies can buy. Protected from their failings by political pressure, while guaranteeing any new up and coming EV concern remains bamboozled and bankrupted by all sorts of Federal regulations that make protoyping and product impossible without tons of money in the first place-money such innovators and inventors have less of because it's being taken away to pay for campaign contributors like Tesla and their cash-padded but blind-to-Imperial-nakedness clients.
Millions in breaks from the state of California, plus actual cash "loaned" from both the state of California and the American Federal Government, and we have less Teslas of both models than exotic Lamborgini's, and a handful of NUMMI guys who maintained their jobs after Toyota pulled out-"saved" rather than created-while most of the former Toyota guys are on unemployment or working somewhere for half their previous salary.
Still no car for the "average" middle-class American to be seen anywhere but in promises. That's money well spent, yah? And I expect to see more state and federal cash going their way within the next three years as everyone involved double-down's on this bad bet.
"That's money well spent, yah? And I expect to see more state and federal cash going their way within the next three years as everyone involved double-down's on this bad bet."
That's no reason to single the company out though, given the plethora of state-funded cash cows there are around!
I do love to hear they can drive past the filling stations with a smile but you never seem to hear how much it costs to charge one of these, or any, electric car up. It would be nice to have a comparision similar to L/100km allowing the fool, I mean individual who is thinking of purchasing one. Even the dual fuel gas or Disel / electric only mention L/100km and neglect to mention the cost to recharge the batteries as if electricity was free.
Sigh...
As 85kWh has been used as an example just calculate using whatever your local electricity cost is - here it would be ~£10 excluding any losses. I could travel ~ 90 miles in my diesel for that - mind that weighs 1.7 tonnes and carries 5+2
On the other hand if electric vehicles did take a good portion of the market they'd be taxed in some way
So you can take 7 people 90 miles in your diesel for a tenner, or perhaps one midget for probably about 90 miles if its not too cold in a car that costs probably 10 times the cost of your diesel for about the same price... ah, now I understand why I am rushing to buy one.
Actually I can - if I drive nicely - achieve about the same distance in my 7 seat petrol ... but only if I drive nicely - pretty much the same as I could drive nicely in the tesla, my car costs what 10k brand new.
Further to my last post thats 52k AFTER the mug tax payer has forked out 7500 in subsidies. Worse its for the cheapest model which only has a 160 mile estimated range at 55mph (and try doing that speed on a UK motorway and you'll have the lorries driving over you)/
What is it about journalists lacking in common sense? Batteries always loose charge with temperature. Why is he so irresponsible that he doesnt plug his car in at night like the manual says? This is not a failure of the Model S, its a failure of intelligence of the journalist and of the NYT for employing such a numpty.
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