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Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

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Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#221

Post by jernfrost »

narrator wrote: post #17

I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is ge…

Building the cheap mass market EV was what we tried in Norway. An utter failure. What it meant was a boring, underpowered car at a high price. Exactly the ugly little cars which EVs where known as. Elon Musk understood you had to start at the high end with low volume and high margin to fund your way to the mass market car.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#222

Post by beefield »

Yaggo wrote: post #208
nl wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flow Batteries[1]! They work (as in: are being used in Africa & South America to power mobile networks). Also my (office) building is powered by one. They don't cost much more than lead-acid They last much, much longer than lead-acid or lithium* There is no limit to the number of power cycles(!!) and they can be deep-discharged. They do have disadvantages - they aren't suitable for cars, and are currently fairly nois…

Interesting, haven't heard about such batteries being commercially sold. Any idea who sells those for private consumers in Europe?

Not sure about the private consumer part in Europe, but following seems to be in Austria:

http://www.bluesky-energy.eu/project/redflow-zinc-bromide-ba...

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#223

Post by pjc50 »

goldenkey wrote: post #217
notJim wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity… whaaat does this comment mean? Are you building some kind of railgun or something?

Just curious, how much damage could a domestic terrorist do with a railgun made from consumer parts?

Railguns are terrible and conventional firearms are much more widely available. If you want a futuristic terror weapon powered by batteries, build a multiple-watt laser. Take down planes by blinding the pilots! Fire it at a glass sculpture in a shopping mall to give thousands of people life-ruining sight loss!

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#224

Post by masklinn »

mavhc wrote: post #210
nl wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flow Batteries[1]! They work (as in: are being used in Africa & South America to power mobile networks). Also my (office) building is powered by one. They don't cost much more than lead-acid They last much, much longer than lead-acid or lithium* There is no limit to the number of power cycles(!!) and they can be deep-discharged. They do have disadvantages - they aren't suitable for cars, and are currently fairly nois…

167 Wh/l = 167kWh per cubic metre, say 16 hours of no sun, 16kW output at night, seems reasonable

167Wh/l is a relatively recent prototype, Redflow uses the older zinc-bromide which is only around 70Wh/l.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#225

Post by [deleted] »

tajen wrote: post #212
pmarreck wrote: post #181

Tesla is going to be a gigantic company one day. Disclaimer: I own one (Model S P85+, about 2 years old). And everyone I let drive it (yes, I am crazy enough to do that... As a fan who pushes the bleeding edge, it's important to share the experience in order to change minds... Anyway, my insurance covers me even when I'm a passenger!) cannot stop talking about it afterwards. I actually think Tesla's market is limited…

How do you deal with the 8-year limited lifetime? I evaluate a Tesla at 4x the cost of a normal car: I can get a new car for €15k lasting 15 years with a lively second market, Teslas are ~€30k, with free supercharger network, and 8 years warranty but no road license after that, and no second-hand market for spare pieces. Have you calculated the total cost of ownership (including insurance and free petrol) and how did…

[deleted]

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#226

Post by [deleted] »

tajen wrote: post #212
pmarreck wrote: post #181

Tesla is going to be a gigantic company one day. Disclaimer: I own one (Model S P85+, about 2 years old). And everyone I let drive it (yes, I am crazy enough to do that... As a fan who pushes the bleeding edge, it's important to share the experience in order to change minds... Anyway, my insurance covers me even when I'm a passenger!) cannot stop talking about it afterwards. I actually think Tesla's market is limited…

How do you deal with the 8-year limited lifetime? I evaluate a Tesla at 4x the cost of a normal car: I can get a new car for €15k lasting 15 years with a lively second market, Teslas are ~€30k, with free supercharger network, and 8 years warranty but no road license after that, and no second-hand market for spare pieces. Have you calculated the total cost of ownership (including insurance and free petrol) and how did…

[deleted]

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#227

Post by vintermann »

jernfrost wrote: post #221
narrator wrote: post #17

I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is ge…

Building the cheap mass market EV was what we tried in Norway. An utter failure. What it meant was a boring, underpowered car at a high price. Exactly the ugly little cars which EVs where known as. Elon Musk understood you had to start at the high end with low volume and high margin to fund your way to the mass market car.

Ah, the Th!nk. Well well, someone had to learn the hard lessons, so others can learn from them.

Although, learn? It's easy to look at things in retrospect and say this billionaire was correct - but one might be committing the Texas sharpshooter error then. Vinod Khosla bet heavily on bioethanol over electric cars.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#228

Post by codeulike »

kalleboo wrote: post #192
imron wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla cars can do this in less than 2 minutes - faster than it takes to fill up a tank of gas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Insert the typical disclaimer here about how they only did that demo to get some California ZEV credits and how they're not moving forward with actually implementing it for end users

There is an actual battery swap station in california where Tesla owners can swap batteries. But not many people sign up for it.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#229

Post by vintermann »

maratd wrote: post #16
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a free market proponent, I assume you support including the externalities of pollution from fossil fuels into their costs? Which would've made the cost of electric cars and renewables cheaper much sooner?

> As a free market proponent, I assume you support including the externalities of pollution from fossil fuels into their costs? How do you even calculate that? For you to calculate externalities, you'd need to be able to assign costs. What's the cost of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? You can't calculate something like that. So let me answer with a simple NO. We don't need anything like that. Cleaner technologies…

Ignoring things because you can't measure them well or negotiate a price on them, isn't bad capitalism. It's just all round bad thinking.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#230

Post by melling »

simonh wrote: post #218
melling wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla hasn't sold 100,000 cars in their entire history. Last year they did sell 50,000 cars. Think they'll double that this year? http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/11/18/how-many-ve...

Do their sales in the first 5 months of 2016 somehow not count?

I was looking at the wrong data. At any rate, the point is that Tesla is trying to ramp up production very fast. Going from 50,000 to 100,000 cars sounds difficult in 12 months, while maintaining quality.
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