Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more efficient than blowing it up in your engine. ICE engines are ~15% efficient at converting energy to movement. You must also include the cost of transporting, refining and drilling for the oil (coal is cheaper to get). This should push it down to ~10% burn to road. Main stream coal power plants are ~30-39% efficient, electric transmission lines are ~95% efficient, battery charging is ~88% efficient and elect…
This also presumes that you have access to a reliable power grid which is not the case in places like central and subcontinental Asia, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster like Superstorm Sandy. (despite that i totally think we should go electric. just that we should figure out ways to setup better infrastructure and disaster mitigation)
2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
161–170 of 286 posts
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#162The Tesla Model S is a great-looking car but, unlike some, I still don't see electric cars as being the future. Batteries are still too heavy, take too long to charge, are too expensive and require materials that in widespread use will probably become far more of a problem than fossil fuels in terms of scarcity. Of course, there can be and no doubt will be technological innovation in this space but (IMHO) the future…
You have literally no idea what you are talking about but that's OK because technology doesn't care about what you think - it just happens (cf. computer adoption, robotic automation, AI automation, cars, trains, trucks, looms, engines, planes, ships). ICE vehicles are relatively complex and not actually cheap going forwards. We're past peak oil and emissions are now being priced (CO2 pollution is no longer free). Tha…
No, it is expensive _today_. Which is different from saying it would be expensive at scale.
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
... and on the battery chemistry issue, Teslas use Lithium-Ion batteries, just like we have been using in laptops for forever. They are not exotic.
You mean the ones that typically only last a year or 2?
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in Seattle, we don't burn coal. Ok I lied, 0.52% of our energy does actually come from coal. But 96% of it is hydro and wind: http://www.seattle.gov/light/fuelmix/
That's a fuel mix to be very proud of. Unfortunately even here, most people in the metro area live outside Seattle city limits, and right across Lake Washington in the burbs the fuel mix is 32% coal, 16% natural gas http://pse.com/aboutpse/EnergySupply/Pages/Electric-Supply.a...
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
If room-temperature superconducting ever becomes a reality, then each car will be loaded with a SMES unit ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy... ) that charges instantly.
Huh, this is weird. Somebody downvoted this comment and my other reply. Care to explain why or are you just going to leave me mystified?
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your post and general outlook on electric vehicles - they are definitely the future. However, I do not agree with Mr. Buffett's statement - if it were the case, no one would ever make a single statement.
> no one would ever make a single statement Maybe that would be a good thing. Most people don't know jack about economics, physics, finance, engineering, artificial intelligence, the future, technology or pretty much anything outside of their day to day job. You'll notice that whenever someone like that does open their mouth in your field without knowing jack about it - you immediately understand that he has no idea…
...
Remember that the next time you are listening to a discussion of complex field - where none of the participants have degrees, industry experience or in depth on the ground knowledge of said fields.
If those who know do not speak, how could we ever listen to any other type of discussion?
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have literally no idea what you are talking about but that's OK because technology doesn't care about what you think - it just happens (cf. computer adoption, robotic automation, AI automation, cars, trains, trucks, looms, engines, planes, ships). ICE vehicles are relatively complex and not actually cheap going forwards. We're past peak oil and emissions are now being priced (CO2 pollution is no longer free). Tha…
> Hydrogen vehicles are just plain stupid from an efficiency stand point - where are you going to get the hydrogen exactly? Purifying it is too expensive - and since it's lighter than air - there is no economical source of hydrogen on earth. It'd be cheaper to fuel your car with coal. No, it is expensive _today_. Which is different from saying it would be expensive at scale.
> According to former U.S. Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, "A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases." Asked when hydrogen cars will be broadly available, Romm replied: "Not in our lifetime, and very possibly never." The Los Angeles Times wrote, in February 2009, "Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won't work in cars. ... Any way you look at it, hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars." A 2007 article in Technology Review stated, "In the context of the overall energy economy, a car like the BMW Hydrogen 7 would probably produce far more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars available today. And changing this calculation would take multiple breakthroughs – which study after study has predicted will take decades, if they arrive at all. In fact, the Hydrogen 7 and its hydrogen-fuel-cell cousins are, in many ways, simply flashy distractions produced by automakers who should be taking stronger immediate action to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of their cars."
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that "Top executives from General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. Tuesday expressed doubts about the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term and suggested their companies are now betting that electric cars will prove to be a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale." The Economist magazine, in September 2008, quoted Robert Zubrin, the author of Energy Victory, as saying: "Hydrogen is 'just about the worst possible vehicle fuel'". The magazine noted the withdrawal of California from earlier goals: "In March [2008] the California Air Resources Board, an agency of California's state government and a bellwether for state governments across America, changed its requirement for the number of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) to be built and sold in California between 2012 and 2014. The revised mandate allows manufacturers to comply with the rules by building more battery-electric cars instead of fuel-cell vehicles." The magazine also noted that most hydrogen is produced through steam reformation, which creates at least as much emission of carbon per mile as some of today's gasoline cars. On the other hand, if the hydrogen could be produced using renewable energy, "it would surely be easier simply to use this energy to charge the batteries of all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles."
The Washington Post asked in November 2009, "But why would you want to store energy in the form of hydrogen and then use that hydrogen to produce electricity for a motor, when electrical energy is already waiting to be sucked out of sockets all over America and stored in auto batteries"? The paper concluded that commercializing hydrogen cars is "stupendously difficult and probably pointless. That's why, for the foreseeable future, the hydrogen car will remain a tailpipe dream". A December 2009 study at UC Davis, published in the Journal of Power Sources, found that, over their lifetimes, hydrogen vehicles will emit more carbon than gasoline vehicles. In July 2011, the Chairman and CEO of General Motors, Daniel Akerson, stated that while the cost of hydrogen fuel cell cars is decreasing: "The car is still too expensive and probably won't be practical until the 2020-plus period, I don't know." GM's Vauxhall Motors spokesman Bill Parfitt expects the HydroGen4 in 2016.
The Obama Administration sought to reduce funding for the development of fuel cell vehicles, concluding that other vehicle technologies will lead to quicker reduction in emissions in a shorter time. Steven Chu, the US Secretary of Energy, stated in 2009 that hydrogen vehicles "will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years". In 2012, however, Chu stated that he sees fuel cell cars as more economically feasible as natural gas prices have fallen and hydrogen reforming technologies have improved.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle#Criticism
Boom headshot. Hydrogen/fuel cells were and are DOA.
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#168The Tesla Model S is a great-looking car but, unlike some, I still don't see electric cars as being the future. Batteries are still too heavy, take too long to charge, are too expensive and require materials that in widespread use will probably become far more of a problem than fossil fuels in terms of scarcity. Of course, there can be and no doubt will be technological innovation in this space but (IMHO) the future…
Those of us who own electric cars know that electric cars have already won. They are just too good compared to regular somewhat-junky gasoline cars. The benefits are too numerous to list. The only problem that I have with my Roadster is that if I want to take a long road trip, there has to be a big stopover in the middle, which makes trips much longer. The Model S solves that. Therefore, EVs have won. They are here n…
> ... if I want to take a long road trip, there has to be a big stopover in the middle, which makes trips much longer. The Model S solves that.
The Model S has a range of about 400 km (250 miles). For long highway-type trips, that's probably about 4 hours of driving. Which is not much.
It won't get you from Köln to Berlin or from Paris to Lyon or from New York to Toronto, to pick a few random examples that slightly exceed 400 km. Those are distances that people would consider "long trips", and quite reasonables ones, too.
Obviously a 400-km-range car is plenty for most people, but we can't pretend it doesn't limit our options or force us to find alternative transportation for some trips that would otherwise not be a problem with a gas-powered car.
I assume you at least partly financed the Roadster with income you earned through Braid, by the way. If so, good for you, and I was glad to contribute! :-)
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an electric car owner, I haven't found a need for swapping batteries. Consider this: if a refueling station offered battery swapping they would also need to exhaustively test your batteries to determine that they were not abused and to determine how much credit to offer for their current capacity. How does that save much time from just using a quick-charge station? Because the batteries wouldn't have to be tested…
Forgot to mention that I am an electric car owner as well (Roadster). I don't really like the idea of battery swapping. It seems like a big hassle. The current Supercharger seems totally fine. I guess it remains to be seen how well it works in practice, once a lot of people have the cars, but right now things look really good. One of the most common pieces of anti-EV rhetoric is "the infrastructure doesn't exist". Th…
Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S
#170The Tesla Model S is a great-looking car but, unlike some, I still don't see electric cars as being the future. Batteries are still too heavy, take too long to charge, are too expensive and require materials that in widespread use will probably become far more of a problem than fossil fuels in terms of scarcity. Of course, there can be and no doubt will be technological innovation in this space but (IMHO) the future…
My understanding is that Tesla's new SuperCharger stations are solar based, charging a a local battery that's used to supply customer Teslas, then feeding any excess back into the grid, making it a "negative carbon footprint" source.