OT: Tesla Road Test

Wow, I guess everyone is trying to hustle the baller tech guys out of their pocket change. Most of the chargers I use in the Boston area are completely free, or charge some nominal flat fee (like a dollar for a couple hours), or give you the first two or three hours free and then charge $2 or $3 per hour pro-rated, mainly just to discourage people from leaving their EV in the coffee shop parking lot charging all day long.

On Sunday, June 25, 2017 at 2:59:08 PM UTC-7, bitrex wrote: ...

The only time I charged at a public station was at a municipal parking lot in Mountain View where the only available parking happened to be at an EV charging station - they had a reduced rate for the first few hours.

The difficulty at Apple is that so many people have EVs that it is difficult to find an open station.

We have something like 1100 EVs here, including a couple of hundred Tesla's and 150 Volt's. We haven't yet had fights breaking out but many don't bother charging at Apple because of the hassle.

kevin

s-buffalo-solar-factory/

I have an off-grid buddy who lives on a mountain. Nine years on, 4 of his 9 BP Solar panel strings have failed catastrophically.

(All the failed panels were amorphous, BTW. The mono-crystalline panels are still producing.)

Meanwhile, we have this...

"California invested heavily in solar power. Now there's so much that other states are sometimes paid to take it

On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.

Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren?t using to avoid overloading its own power lines.

It happened on eight days in January and nine in February as well."

Cheers, James Arthur

That happened with Germany too. Money is becoming like that- you may have to pay banks to take it (negative interest rates).

At some point the music may stop.

--sp

--
Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany

her

er

es.

More likely somebody with some sense will get into the act, and make the sy stem put money into places that encourage it's operators to do the right th ing.

Useful chunks of energy storage hardware is what come to my mind, but I don't know the numbers.

Enron did end up being taken to court, but it did take a while.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

I know. You don't have a dog in this race.

The superchargers aren't intended for local use. They are there to support road trips. Having an all electric car and not at least having a 50 amp,

240 volt outlet at home is a bit silly. It doesn't cost a lot to have one installed.

On the other hand, with the model 3 introduction, Tesla is doubling the number of chargers

Pretty funny that you call a $40k car "humble". lol

You don't have to be an electric utility to make sure there are fast annd easy ways to charge your all electric car. GM doesn't even support you in any way regarding home charging. The salesman said he kept a list of electricians he provide. Really?

A few other drivers... Sales of the Volt and Bolt are not yet enough to support the line. GM is most likely losing money on them. Perhaps the roll out of the Tesla Model 3 will provide enough boost to the electric car concept that it will boost the sales of the GM EVs?

Lol! Has GM sold ever as many EVs as Tesla has preorders? I see GM has sold a total of 134,500 as of last December. So is GM still beta-testing their EVs?

I don't know why you have to make up stuff. That's all speculation. After Tesla has 100's of thousands of cars on the road with VW and the rest just starting to roll out new cars, I can't see the Teslas suddenly becoming also rans. By 2022 Tesla will have the model Y and possibly another model on the market technologically ahead of anyone else as far as we can tell.

Unless somebody (there's a story about somebody, everybody, anybody and nobody) produces fast chargers to match or excel the Tesla chargers, the Tesla will always stand out. What Tesla did with the charging network was essential for the pioneer in the industry. Now it is time for the others to play catch up. I expect it will take better part of a decade for that to happen.

What you seem to be missing that GM is also ignoring, is that the single biggest limitation of all electric vehicles is the inability to quickly charge the cars when you have run them close to empty. If you are done driving for the day, then a slower charger that takes hours to charge is fine. But when you are only half way to your destination the charge needs to be an hour or so else people are sitting waiting for the car. Just like people don't like waiting for their computers, people don't like waiting for their cars to charge. It *will* be the largest factor in selling otherwise similar cars.

--

Rick C

But when you are only half way to your destination the charge needs

It is interesting to consider that the equivalent power flow through an ordinary gas station filling hose is in the MEGAWatts.

m

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote on 6/26/2017 9:40 AM:

I think that is pretty obvious. The established fueling and maintenance network for carbon fueled vehicles is the single advantage at this point. They've been driven long enough to figure out workarounds for every problem they have. They aren't a perfect solution, but we have fitted our lives to suit them. Consider the enormous infrastructure to support autos that we take for granted. The construction and maintenance of roads takes a pretty fair share of our tax money. We really don't give that much thought other than when we are sitting in traffic going 0.5 miles per hour. Every time I drive I see gasoline tanker trucks going up and down the roads to get fuel to the filling stations. We no longer give thought to any of the adjustments we have made to have autos in our lives, they are a part of us.

Now we need to move away from fueling autos from petroleum. It doesn't need to happen overnight. We have time left to make the transition gracefully. Hybrid cars are a natural transition vehicle using batteries and electric motors to make cars more efficient preserving the petroleum left while we complete the transition to non-petroleum energy sources. But we are now entering the initial stages of all electric vehicles becoming the most effective alternative to the ICE. So now we need to adapt our lives ever so little to meld all electric vehicles into our lives the same way we did with petroleum vehicles 100 years ago. It won't take much mostly because we are on the cusp of another revolution in transportation, self driving cars.

When cars are completely able to drive us anywhere we want, without a human driver, it will become such a different vehicle that it will revolutionize transportation in a similar way to how the auto initially transformed transportation. Many aspects of electric cars will no longer be of concern and even the huge infrastructure of roads will become more efficient. Cars will no longer need to be parked by the driver. They will be able to refuel themselves when needed. There will be such a level of autonomy for the car itself that private ownership of a car will become obsolete. They will be used like taxis summoning a car when needed and releasing the car at the end of your trip for someone else to use it. Service of the vehicle will become a function the users never see. Unlike the present public transportation system, it won't be a one size fits all solution. With the volume of usage being so much higher there will be competition rather than monopolies making a proliferation of services practical. If you want an econobox to get you to work as cheaply as possible you can use that. If you want to go on a long trip in comfort, you can use that. If you need a vehicle to transport a half ton of manure, you can use that. The best part will be that you no longer need to buy any of these vehicles.

At that point you won't know or care what powers the vehicle. It will become a seamless mechanism of transportation making buses, taxis and possibly passenger trains obsolete, not to mention your personal garage... oh, maybe not the garage. After all, you will still need a place to store all the stuff that doesn't fit in your house. No one actually keeps cars in their garages. lol

--

Rick C

There is a bit of a disconnect. There is too much demand for mid day charging of vehicles so the charging stations are overwhelmed, yet there is a surplus of electric power mid day. Hmmmm, how could those two problems possibly be solved???

--

Rick C

There is some sort of applesauce there. Rather than paying other areas to take power for free or even paying them to take it, why not do the same thing with their customers??? If they offered economic incentives, customers would crank up the AC to cool the house during the day saving energy in the evening when they get home, etc. Better yet, pay your customers to charge their EVs during the day instead of discounting the cost of electricity at night.

--

Rick C

I guess that's why DC chargers are used for fast charging. It puts the conversion in the charger rather than the car so the only car limit is in the batteries themselves.

Obviously a fast charger isn't important for a hybrid unless you are trying to use it as a poor man's EV (although a poor man can't afford one). As long as the internal ICE is powerful enough to supply the average load, they are good enough. It would be the exceedingly rare use case that required fast charging for a 40 mile all electric range. So there is no point in even talking about it in the context of a discussion of all electric vehicle charging on trips where fast charging is needed.

--

Rick C

I wouldn't want to drive that POS he drives very far, even if it could, either.

- EVs are silly.

- The cost of a 50A outlet is quite variable, depending on your location and the home layout. 6/3 isn't zip cord.

- Half the people can't cover an unexpected $100 expense so even the best case it isn't automatic.

Well, it is a POS.

Electricians are really a local issue. There aren't very many national companies in the residential electrical business. It makes sense for the dealers to provide this service, much as Home Depot and Lowes do. Hell, it's so cheap and easy to do, just go down to HD and hire an illegal for the day.

I can pretty safely guess you've never even set foot in one, so your opinion is bullshit.

Only about 1% of which is actually used to move the weight of the driver and his cargo at speed in the general direction he wishes to go.

how did you make up that number?

other

ower

ines.

e system put money into places that encourage it's operators to do the righ t thing.

is

With *more* subsidies!

"[W]e think it can be a popular vehicle if people can get over the fact that they are paying over $37,000 for a Chevrolet that would cost $20,000 if it were internal combustion." "There?s no greater proof of a vehicle being a compliance car than being sold at a loss before incentives."

"As an electric-only manufacturer, Tesla has been able to really tap the program. In the third quarter, it made $139 million selling credits, whic h helped Tesla hit its second-ever quarterly profit on a GAAP basis."

Cheers, James Arthur

Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote on 6/26/2017 12:39 PM:

My ignoring the weight of the vehicle. He seems to prefer motorcycles although they aren't really much more efficient. Maybe he is thinking we all need to drive mopeds or electric skateboards?

--

Rick C

her

er

es.

I recently looked up the U.S. debt, and calculated the interest payment on it if interest rates were allowed to reach their thirty-year average (5.5% on the 10-year Treasury note)(*). Instant calamity--we couldn't make the mont hly payments.

(*)

And when it does, grab your chair!

Cheers, James Arthur

You might find it pedantic, but just because driving a car instead of a skateboard is usually a requirement, which automatically implies higher losses in overcoming the inertia of the vehicle to accelerate it up to speed and then keeping it at that speed against air and rolling resistance, doesn't mean that the energy required to do so is serving a useful function given the main goal of moving someone from one point to another.

The whole issue of how much "power flow" is coming out of filling station hose, or what the energy density of gasoline is, or the fact that you can store a megawatt-hour in the fuel tank of an average F-150 is a red-herring anyway. So what? You can make any kind of vehicle you like of any size and shape and give it some kind of storage thing that can hold just about any kind of fuel you want, limited only by volume and chemistry. What does this have to do with the price of potatoes?