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2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

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Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#271

Post by jblow »

fr0sty wrote: post #157
jblow wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"You just need some electricity." If you wave your hand enough anything is trivial. The "some" you are talking about is 250A @ 400V (100kW) which is a trifle more than a typical gas station can readily supply (especially if you want to charge more than one at a time).

Okay, so what if a particular gas station can't supply 100kW, so what? You charge at 50kW? That is definitely less convenient, but still feasible for filling up your battery and getting you where you want to go. It's still infrastructure that works, so the anti-EV argument "there's no infrastructure and the infrastructure can never be built" is still obviously wrong. It's also still obviously wrong if you drop the charging to 25kW. etc, etc.

Besides, do you know that a typical gas station can't readily supply 100kW? How do you know? Has anyone even thought about this seriously (except Tesla)?

I am a little bit shocked by the amount of specious naysaying that is happening in this thread. This is supposed to be Hacker News, where people are motivated to really think about problems, to build solutions, etc, etc. I don't see any of that attitude in some of these replies.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#272

Post by ryanhuff »

mncolinlee wrote: post #260
ryanhuff wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the 250 miles a max range, assuming ideal driving conditions? Also, as the car ages, will the battery range erode significantly? If its similar to consumer rechargeable battery technology, should we expect that the 250 mile range will be closer to 150 miles with "typical" driving behavior and after the car has been driven for 50K miles?

It entirely depends upon the chemistry of the automotive lithium battery, which typically use different catalysts than laptop batteries. For Lithium Manganese Oxide batteries, the prediction is 70% after eight years. That would be 175 miles range at 120,000 miles driving. There are new and better chemistries coming out like lithium NMC arriving this year that store 75% more energy per lb at a similar price. http://in…

Thanks. If you read the comments on the page that you linked to, you will see a couple of Leaf customers complaining that their battery capacity is already down 15%. Hopefully the new batteries technology addresses this.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#273

Post by tsotha »

incision wrote: post #268
tsotha wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks on the Tesla forums claim that you can pre-pay for a an eventual replacement to the tune of about $12K or 11% of the price of a new Roadster. Right. The Roadster costs so much it makes sense to replace the battery. But if you paid $30k for a car and the battery costs $12k, it's a different story. Normal people are not going to spend $100k on a car.

Sure. When I consider the $12K number is from 2010 and folks are estimating a new Model S battery could run as little as $14K...A $30K Tesla sporting a battery that will cost $3K to replace 10 years down the road doesn't seem that far off.

If those numbers are real then it works. But I don't see how the battery could possibly be $3k. Battery costs are primarily driven by materials - unless there's some breakthrough that allows the use of something cheaper than lithium, batteries for a car with a reasonable range are going to retail at a minimum of $10k.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#274

Post by mncolinlee »

ryanhuff wrote: post #272
mncolinlee wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It entirely depends upon the chemistry of the automotive lithium battery, which typically use different catalysts than laptop batteries. For Lithium Manganese Oxide batteries, the prediction is 70% after eight years. That would be 175 miles range at 120,000 miles driving. There are new and better chemistries coming out like lithium NMC arriving this year that store 75% more energy per lb at a similar price. http://in…

Thanks. If you read the comments on the page that you linked to, you will see a couple of Leaf customers complaining that their battery capacity is already down 15%. Hopefully the new batteries technology addresses this.

That is a problem in the hottest regions of the country and the world. Our recent climate change-related heat wave made the problem even worse. There is no active heat management in the current Nissan Leaf battery except a battery warmer for cold temperatures.

Since I live in Minnesota, I don't expect I'll venture to the Arizona or SoCal desert with my Leaf, where most of the damaged Leafs are. I also limit my charge to 80% max during the summer to lengthen the battery life. So far, I haven't had any noticeable capacity loss.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#275

Post by mncolinlee »

tocomment wrote: post #70
mncolinlee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess a mix of the positive jobs report and short covering from margin calls is at fault. Right-leaning investors have seemed to want the company to fail for months, but Tesla is looking resilient with their good backlog and a strong economy. They're paying back their DOE loan early.

What do you mean by short covering from margin calls? What's causing the margin calls?

You can only "short" a stock by borrowing the shares using margin. (Put options are another way, but that is actually a side bet, not the same as short selling.)

If you exceed the margin requirements because the stock price rises i.e. you owe more than you have capital and credit on hand, your brokerage may force you to "cover" or buy the underlying stock at the current market price. They do this to "call in" your debt to them. This is referred to as a "margin call."

When a lot of short margin calls happen all at once, this is called a "short squeeze" because it squeezes more short sellers into covering by buying the stock at the current market price, which in turn causes the price to rise and squeeze other investors.

In the case of Tesla, the stock is not very liquid. At the current volume, it would take thirty days for all short investors to find enough shares to cover their debts. This means a short squeeze can result in dramatic hikes in the stock price and even small hikes in the price can amplify short seller losses.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#276

Post by jamesmcn »

lancewiggs wrote: post #229
jamesmcn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One way to think about this is that electric vehicles (EVs) are at the iPhone 1 stage, with the Tesla S being the first to demonstrate to a lot of people that it can all be put together in a compelling, yet expensive and not quite perfect package. I think it is more accurate to compare electric vehicles to the Motorola DynaTAC phones ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC ). They are expensive, and are ext…

That's a little unfair I feel (comparing the Tesla S to the original brick mobile phones). However the point remains though that we are seeing the future, and only the wealthy can afford it for now.

How, specifically, is it unfair?

The brick phones were revolutionary, but they were far from capable of displacing landlines. There were special cases where the early mobile phones were superior, just like the Teslas are superior in some ways to IC engine cars (insane acceleration, for example).

That said, the current crop of electric cars is not suitable for replacing the average daily driver. They are more expensive. No one but the manufacturer can service them. Charging stations are few and far between. The power grid is far from capable of supporting any more than a tiny population of electric vehicles.

I do hope that electric cars will become a practical replacement for petroleum cars at some time in the future. That time is not today.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#277

Post by davidpardo »

freehunter wrote: post #193
rossjudson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how about you RENT A CAR once a year, for your 8000 mile trip across multiple state lines. Your daily commute is how far?

So let's do some math. I drive a Toyota truck that goes anywhere and does everything. It gets 20mpg average (I have a ScanGauge for monitoring this). It's 14 years old, and it cost me $5000 when I bought it. So at an average daily commute for Americans of 16 miles [1] (my commute is 5 miles one direction), that would give me an average of 400 bidirectional gallons used per year (16 miles one direction times 250 worki…

Congratulations on your 3,50$ per gallon. Where I live -Europe- it's about 8 us$. With these prices, the comparison between two luxury sedans -tesla S against BMW 535 or Mercedes E 320- is not that much skewed. Gas isnt getting cheaper and battery tech is better every year, so, even on financial terms, it makes some sense. You can't compare a toyota pickup and a model S in any criteria but overall length. Acceleration, top speed, comfort... Apples and oranges.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#278

Post by r00fus »

panacea wrote: post #217
lobster_johnson wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm all for EVs and would happily change if I could afford to, this strikes me as off: > ... 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…

Köln to Berlin and Paris to Lyon are train journeys, not car trips.

Typical European - keep rubbing it in... the fact that your non-car infrastructure doesn't suck.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#279

Post by r00fus »

knowtheory wrote: post #126
confluence wrote: post #122

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)

However, that's where hybrids shine - the slightly increased complexity of my Prius still makes it 2x as gas-efficient as a non-hybrid gas car.

I remeber a slashdot post a few years ago about a Prius onwer who mentioned how the evacuation of Houston during Hurricane Rita was an absolute nightmare for most car owners - the roads were packed and everyone was doing 1-2mph for 8+ hours. Many SUVs were simply abandoned on the side of the road. He ended up getting 55mpg for the week.

If I didn't own a hybrid already, a Volt would be an awesome car to get - can be electric for it's full range, but like modern diesel trains - it simply uses the gas engine as a powerplant to run it's electric motor.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#280

Post by stretchwithme »

pstuart wrote: post #222
evgen wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do I get to opt out of subsidizing ICE cars and the infrastructure needed to keep them on the road?

Isn't much of the subsidizing of infrastructure (roads) via fuel taxes? How should EVs be taxed?

Good point. If fuel taxes pay for roads, how will electric car owners pay for their share of the wear and tear?
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