31–40 of 104 posts
Underestimate the remaining miles. Even if that makes you look bad up front. Its an eerie form of cognitive dissonance when your reserves are dropping faster than you consumption and the wheels in your mind spin wondering "will I have enough". You never forget this feeling. Even if its just a test drive, you'll associate Tesla cars with that feeling forever after.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article mentioned that the top-end battery weighs in at half a ton --- not exactly hot-swapping material. Also, when it comes to safety, center of gravity, chassis rigidity, etc --- I'm sure there were a myriad of engineering decisions beyond weight that go against hot swapping. And that's not even getting to added cost and logistics of maintaining a network of skilled battery swap experts, "ownership" over the b…
You're right, those are all drawbacks. They all pale in comparison to the advantages, though. Swapping my car's battery should be as big a deal as swapping the propane cylinder on my gas grill. And yes, batteries these days are perfectly capable of monitoring themselves in a leased-usage scenario. Your laptop battery has its own CPU and EEPROM, for instance. To understand why, see any recent news story on the Dreamli…
In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank. Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is something that I find astonishing. (To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-swappable batteries ar…
I think you are missing something: where do you put the replaceable batteries? Tesla's battery packs are distributed throughout the car, both to allow for cargo space (not having a trunk would be something of a minus) and to distribute the weight of all those batteries. I am having a very hard time envisioning a way to achieve both of those goals while making the batteries replaceable.
It's just that for the majority of people, battery swapping makes no sense. They can charge their vehicle over night at very very cheap prices and have enough range to serve them all day. If you insist on taking a cross-country roadtrip, rent an ICE - the infrastructure is just not there yet (or peoples minds have not accomodated - see this article).
My friends think I'm dowdy. Until recent years, I was very conservative about estimates. Every "event" in a trip adds 5 minutes, no matter how "nothing" it seems. I was often too early, but never late. A Tesla S with the 260 mile battery, I would treat like a car with 130 miles range. Plenty for an around town commuter and errand vehicle. A Leaf, I would treat like a 50 mile range car. Also, why don't those things co…
Knowing nothing about heaters, I'm curious: why does electric heat make no sense? My intuition would be that an electric heater would require far fewer components (especially considering the battery is already in place), be less dangerous, and require less maintenance. What is the relative efficiency of electric heaters to propane heaters?
You can do electric heat via heat pumps, but it requires more equipment and it doesn't work if it's too cold. You can get about a 4 to 5 advantage over plain resistance heat.
Gasoline engines lose a lot of energy to waste heat -- but sometimes that waste heat is exactly what you want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, those are all drawbacks. They all pale in comparison to the advantages, though. Swapping my car's battery should be as big a deal as swapping the propane cylinder on my gas grill. And yes, batteries these days are perfectly capable of monitoring themselves in a leased-usage scenario. Your laptop battery has its own CPU and EEPROM, for instance. To understand why, see any recent news story on the Dreamli…
It would be nice, sure, but your propane cylinder doesn't cost thousands of dollars or weigh half a ton. There are physical realities to contend with.
Yes, and we've just read about them in the New York Times.
In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank. Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is something that I find astonishing. (To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-swappable batteries ar…
To some extent there is a standards problem: there is not a common battery pack (like there is a gas tank fill point). But even if there were, the batteries would continue to run down after delivery (unless supplied with a non-trivial amount of power). And the space required to physically store these batteries would occupy a lot of volume. After all, gasoline/diesel is far more energy-dense than modern batteries.
So I run a luxury car rental company and one of the most common questions I get from folks these days (especially those in the tech community) is: "When are you guys getting a Tesla?" This article is _exactly_ why we're not getting one for the fleet anytime soon, and it's basically the answer I've been giving people since the Roadster came out (and the questions started). Tesla is an awesome, awesome company. I'm a f…
Luxury car rental company? Please tell me more (like do you have a website??)
I ask because I know of a couple of luxury car rental companies, but there is one ore more things about each of them that make them exceedingly unpleasant to deal with. I would be interested to try doing business with a luxury car rental company that is run by people who also read HN - seems to be a good signal for not-totally-fucked-up business practices.
In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank. Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is something that I find astonishing. (To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-swappable batteries ar…
The battery for the Model S is the entire base of the car. It's over seven feet long, weighs more than half a ton and costs about $12,000 to make. I'm sure they would have loved if it could have been swappable, but getting there from the current technology would mean a lot of compromise that would almost certainly not be worth it.
Of course, without an industry-wide effort to standardize a few core battery sizes for different applications, it's a moot point. That is the problem that I wish Musk had set out to solve.
In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank. Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is something that I find astonishing. (To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-swappable batteries ar…
Maybe there will be swappable batteries eventually, or one part of the battery will be swappable, but as far as I understand thats not coming soon.