Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

theunderstatement.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 284 posts

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#201

Post by 3am »

rbanffy wrote: post #170
3am wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are precisely wrong. Targeting people that already buy into energy efficiency has low payoff. Say you have your enlightened urban dweller, getting 50mpg. With the fancy new hybrids, let's say they double that and get 100mpg. Given 100K miles of driving, that saves 1000 gallons of fuel. Now, take your suburbanite SUV driver getting 20mpg. You only have to get their mileage to 25mpg to save the same amount of fuel…

Biofuels are definitely not in their infancy. My first car ran on ethanol and it was in the mid 80's. The technology in very mature.

But most ethanol is net energy negative. Brazilian sugarcane is an exception, but it loses some of its advantage when it's shipped to the US in tankers. Even then, sugarcane requires non-renewable inputs (just not as much as corn). Cellulosic ethanol (from plants that can grow well on marginal farmland, like switchgrass) _is_ still in its infancy. Also, most current engines would need to all be retrofitted to run on anything much greater than E85 because of the greater corrosion.

You're right, though, I should've said something like 'practical biofuels' are in their infancy. I was really more referring to algae oil based petroleum or butanol, as they seem like the most promising candidates for a net-energy positive and high energy density renewable fuel.

(also, it's very cool that you ran on that in the 80s, mind if I ask what kind of car it was, or if you'd had it customized?)

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#202

Post by eropple »

potatolicious wrote: post #130
arjunnarayan wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. GE didn't do that. Nissan didn't do that. Toyota didn't do that. Tesla did. I think fundamentally changing people's perceptions of what an electric car is and what it can do is the single most impactfu…

And that's the genius of it. You are not paying to change the narrative - but lots of other people are . Even if Tesla ends up a footnote in the history of automotives, their impact will be felt for decades, just like Sun. Whatever happens to Elon Musk's company, we are all better off, and for that I wouldn't consider the money wasted. And I don't think Tesla's death is really that certain. Remember that Apple pionee…

> I wouldn't consider the money wasted.

I wonder if the people shelling out $40,000 for a battery replacement agree with you.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#203

Post by kerryfalk »

nandemo wrote: post #193
SeanLuke wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Completely disagree. Tesla is, I think, unquestionably the most impactful company in the game, including GE and Nissan. For two reasons. First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. P…

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. Really? I never heard of Tesla outside of HN. I think a large proportion of the 10s of thousands who have bought electric cars in Japan don't know of Tesla either. No doubt the very existence of Tesla…

Neither is Aston Martin, but they're a profitable and successful UK based auto manufacturer.

There are many successful companies that never achieve the kind of brand awareness that you are identifying. It's generally not a condition for success.

I am an auto enthusiast and Tesla is very well known among enthusiasts. Appealing to enthusiasts (Early Adopters) is an acceptable business strategy. Tesla doesn't need to market to a wider audience yet.

I fail to see the issues that others are claiming here. Assuming they can meet demand (last I heard there is significant demand for the Model S, I don't have data to cite at the moment) and are profitable with at that volume their risks seem to me to be more of the typical manufacturer's risk. Quality and warranty issues, aftermarket support, production costs, etc. Not so much from weak market demand.

EDIT: HN won't let me reply to your comment yet so I'll do it here.

I'm disagreeing with what I feel you're implying with this:

I think a large proportion of the 10s of thousands who have bought electric cars in Japan don't know of Tesla either.

But I suspect they aren't that well-known by the general public.

I read that as "This is Tesla's market, they're not known in this market, this is a risk to their business". I disagree with that. That is not their market and that market (general public, 10s of thousands of electric car buyers in Japan) is unimportant at this time because they're very well known within their target market.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#204

Post by sopooneo »

SeanLuke wrote: post #106
jdietrich wrote: post #75

Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Nissan are now in full production of the Leaf, a practical electric car that's half the price of the Model S. Renault have the Fluence ZE on sale in Israel and ready to go internationally this year. Mitsubishi are selling the i-MiEV in quantity in Hong Kong and Japan. All of these big…

> Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency. Completely disagree. Tesla is, I think, unquestionably the most impactful company in the game, including GE and Nissan. For two reasons. First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. P…

Using up all our fossil fuels and leaving the world a crisp wasteland is one thing, but using the word "impactful" is another. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=impactful

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#206

Post by nandemo »

kerryfalk wrote: post #203
nandemo wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. Really? I never heard of Tesla outside of HN. I think a large proportion of the 10s of thousands who have bought electric cars in Japan don't know of Tesla either. No doubt the very existence of Tesla…

Neither is Aston Martin, but they're a profitable and successful UK based auto manufacturer. There are many successful companies that never achieve the kind of brand awareness that you are identifying. It's generally not a condition for success. I am an auto enthusiast and Tesla is very well known among enthusiasts. Appealing to enthusiasts (Early Adopters) is an acceptable business strategy. Tesla doesn't need to ma…

Sure, I agree with you. What part of my comment are you disagreeing with? Previous comment says that Tesla changed the image of the electric car, I'm skeptical of that.

(except that I don't get your example of Aston Martin as not well-known brand. It's James Bond's car!)

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#207

Post by brmj »

This strikes me as extraordinarily foolish. It's not that hard to have a hard shutdown mode in which most of those parasitic loads are gone and trigger it if the battery charge drops bellow a certain level. We've had that technology in laptops for quite a while. This is not a hard problem to solve, and it is obvious enough that it should have occurred to someone. Also, monitoring the current it is getting for charging and displaying a warning if it is insufficient and perhaps a projected charging time would be a good feature.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#208

Post by TeMPOraL »

yew wrote: post #195
TeMPOraL wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way to the future is to convince people that new technology is better for them. If the message instead is "you need to give up things you like for the greater good," people will oppose you at every move, and rightly so; While I agree in principle, ... > do you really want to live in a world where computer screens are just barely bright enough to see, where buildings are sweltering on hot days, freezing on cold…

Reading their analysis of nuclear power (which is, by the by, about as renewable as solar power; we'll run out of fissionables around the time the Sun goes out), I'm not seeing any reason you couldn't run things just on that if you solved the political problems. Unless I'm missing something (always a possibility, of course) their later comparisons are all to a "green stack" that doesn't include nuclear.

Yes, you're right, my mistake. I expressed myself wrong (thought one think, wrote another...). We can live on renewables + nuclear (if we get there, which would be a monumental task - both politically and in terms of building necessary infrastructure, not to mention electrifying pretty much everything that now burns fuel), but definitely not on renewables alone. And this transition needs to be started ASAP.

The final comparisons of stacks were against electrified and reduced consumption (author started by pointing out how to reduce overall energy use to little more than 50% of the base value). There are many easy tricks that can help with this reduction - like better home insulation, keeping heating few degrees lower, using heat pumps for air conditioning, etc. - that don't mean one has to live without hot water & computers. But people need to start implementing those measures if we are to have any chance in transitioning to a sustainable energy economy.

Re: "It's A Brick" - Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem

#210

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

pclark wrote: post #96
3am wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are precisely wrong. Targeting people that already buy into energy efficiency has low payoff. Say you have your enlightened urban dweller, getting 50mpg. With the fancy new hybrids, let's say they double that and get 100mpg. Given 100K miles of driving, that saves 1000 gallons of fuel. Now, take your suburbanite SUV driver getting 20mpg. You only have to get their mileage to 25mpg to save the same amount of fuel…

The point OP is making is that these SUV people fundamentally do not care about efficiency - if they do not care, they have no interest in optimising their milage. The messaging is mostly wasted.

This is a fallacy that is perpetuated all over the place, not just on HN. It's not that many SUV drivers don't care about efficiency; rather it's not a primary concern. The primary concern is having a vehicle large and powerful enough to do what they need to get done. Sure, for a percentage, that's just hauling their single fat ass to the mall. But for many more they need to haul a boat, or a pack of kids and all the associated stuff without tying it to the roof of the car, etc.

Have you even noticed how many hybrid SUVs are on the market? Who do you think is buying them?

Post reply on HN