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Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

nytimes.com

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Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#61

Post by CamperBob2 »

tkahnoski wrote: post #47
bpc9 wrote: post #24

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…

I actually think the major thing missing here ia not swapping out the entire pack (although that would probably be more time efficient), but having some sort of emergency pack to get you that extra 5 or 10 miles you need to a charging station (or in the case of the article, release the parking brake to quicken the towing process).

(or in the case of the article, release the parking brake to quicken the towing process).

Yes, that part of the article struck me as a real head-scratcher. This kind of "engineering" is becoming all too common in the auto industry, even among companies that have been around for decades and should know better.

For instance, the battery in the new-generation Porsche 911 is in the front trunk... which can only be opened electrically.

WTF, people? Are all the smart guys and gals working for Google these days, or something?

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#62

Post by bwhite »

purplelobster wrote: post #5
tokenadult wrote: post #2

Very worth reading if you want to know what it's like to drive a Tesla Model S on an actual road trip. The New York Times reporter John M. Broder finds out that the gauge in the Model S to estimate remaining mileage before the next charge is badly confused by temperatures below the usual temperatures in California. I remember back when I used to have a travel-intensive job that I was flying into airports all over the…

For sure. The lack of charging stations will eventually be solved, but longer charging times and unreliable readings might be with us forever. Hopefully the cost offset for fuel will make it worth it.

Gas stations are incredibly common. Public EV charging stations will never be as common unless a different business model is adopted.

If EVs become common, people will have home charging stations. Demand for non-at-home charging stations will come from (1) folks who drive a lot and need to charge intraday (and who cannot charge at work) and (2) road trippers. The sum of both of these categories is fairly small and less demand means less supply. So if you do fit into one of those two categories, you will need to plan your driving carefully instead of figuring that you'll be able to pick up some gas when you need it. This can be overcome by arranging for the proliferation of public EV charging stations even absent the demand. Perhaps the manufacturer or municipalities will subsidize it.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#63

Post by labcomputer »

rdouble wrote: post #51
labcomputer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be different? So, I've been reading the forums at teslamotorsclub.com recently, and there are a lot of questions (and answers) about the Model S's range. From what has been written over there, it sounds like the car's speed has the biggest impact on range. In the NYT piece, I notice that the only time he mentions his speed is after it started to…

If he stayed at a hotel there would be nothing to plug into.

I have no personal experience with this, but several forum members of the site I mentioned above have written that they have never been refused a 120V plug-in (which, again, would have been enough for the author to complete his trip--provided that it wasn't fueled by amphetamines and a mason jar). The have also written that hotel managers are often amiable to allowing 240V charging when there is an available socket.

I also just checked plugshare.com: there are at least half a dozen public J1772 charging stations (which are relatively high power) near the route segment where the author plausibly had range anxiety. Why he chose to charge at Butch's Lunchonette when there was a high power station nearby is baffling. What is doubly baffling is that he launched on a 209 road-mile trip with 185 miles of estimated range, and then made no attempt to recharge the car until he was nearly stuck (if you believe the numbers on the little map inset). So, I'm afraid that I can't escape the conclusion that this is a problem of the author's making.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#64

Post by cromwellian »

Why did the reporter have to rope Steven Chu into the article? Even if all the facts are 100% right, it seems lame to try and make this a political issue.

I know people who have done family road trips with the Tesla S already and didn't have those problems in normal weather. One could surmise that pushing the edges of the range AND pushing extreme weather conditions might be risky, and in an EV it is certainly riskier than in a gas car, but like the Top Gear "driving a roadster on a race track drains the battery horrendously", it somewhat reads like an attempt to intentionally push an EV to the breaking limit, and then write a negative article about it. The political angle of trying to make Tesla look like a Steve Chu/DoE failure increases my suspicions.

Could you imagine a reporter writing an article about a gas car that he intentionally drove at the limit of its mileage, got stuck on an interstate, and then turned around and roped in government loans to General Motors?

The Tesla S deserves criticism in order to shake out bugs and improve the software to reduce customer surprise, to better predict battery life, no doubt about that. But this should not be used by the anti-EV crusaders who have an axe to grind to score points against ex-Obama administration officials.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#65

Post by bwhite »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #52
bwhite wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the first person with this idea: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ 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…

But even if there were, the batteries would continue to run down after delivery (unless supplied with a non-trivial amount of power). My thinking is that they would be kept on trickle charge at the gas station after delivery. That wouldn't take a huge amount of power. The actual recharging process would happen at a depot that has high power connectivity to the grid with low distribution losses. I suspect it would be…

Lithium-ion batteries are supposed to be pretty good as resisting self-discharge, losing only .3-.5% per day (or around 10% per month). The Tesla S has the 60 kWh or 85 kWh battery, so replacing around half a percent of that each day is 300-425 Wh. That's not much at all! If the battery replacement machines are simple and foolproof, perhaps home delivery of batteries and a small trickle charger could be a competitive model to full-blown home chargers?

Storing the batteries at the station will require much more volume than the analogous amount of gas/diesel. And a dumb tank beats a smart battery charger with software and EEPROMs if your concern is resiliency. Some EV problems are pretty clearly chicken/egg adoption problems. But there are some real infrastructure problems, too, and other changes may bear far more fruit towards the goal of more efficient energy exploitation.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#66

Post by glenra »

bwhite wrote: post #62
purplelobster wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. The lack of charging stations will eventually be solved, but longer charging times and unreliable readings might be with us forever. Hopefully the cost offset for fuel will make it worth it.

Gas stations are incredibly common. Public EV charging stations will never be as common unless a different business model is adopted. If EVs become common, people will have home charging stations. Demand for non-at-home charging stations will come from (1) folks who drive a lot and need to charge intraday (and who cannot charge at work) and (2) road trippers. The sum of both of these categories is fairly small and le…

Making people sit and wait for an hour whenever they need to recharge is just plain nuts. It makes the "road tripper" use case untenable. The right way to handle this for road trippers is to swap the battery packs or swap their contents. Don't make the driver wait while his battery is recharged - swap in a full pack and send him on his way. Charge the battery that was left behind slowly and at leisure, then give it to the next driver who pulls in needing a charge.

I don't care how many charging stations there are - adding multiple hours of charging time to a short trip like that is just not going to work.

Although there's one other conceivable option for a technical solution - if you could add charging circuitry to the freeway and recharge while driving, that would be a game-changer.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#67

Post by goodcanadian »

cromwellian wrote: post #64

Why did the reporter have to rope Steven Chu into the article? Even if all the facts are 100% right, it seems lame to try and make this a political issue. I know people who have done family road trips with the Tesla S already and didn't have those problems in normal weather. One could surmise that pushing the edges of the range AND pushing extreme weather conditions might be risky, and in an EV it is certainly riskie…

I agree with your comments about the politics, but I have one nitpick. 30F does not sound like extreme weather. Where I grew up, below freezing is normal for half the year. I am really curious how they are going to solve the problem of making electric vehicles work at -40F.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#68

Post by jzwinck »

purplelobster wrote: post #5
tokenadult wrote: post #2

Very worth reading if you want to know what it's like to drive a Tesla Model S on an actual road trip. The New York Times reporter John M. Broder finds out that the gauge in the Model S to estimate remaining mileage before the next charge is badly confused by temperatures below the usual temperatures in California. I remember back when I used to have a travel-intensive job that I was flying into airports all over the…

For sure. The lack of charging stations will eventually be solved, but longer charging times and unreliable readings might be with us forever. Hopefully the cost offset for fuel will make it worth it.

Regarding unreliable readings of remaining charge, I'm of two minds. Consider digital cameras, which use a similar battery chemistry. For more than a decade, Sony has for some reason been basically the only manufacturer whose cameras produce a fairly specific and reliable indication of time remaining. Maybe it's a patent thing, but my Sony prosumer camera from 2002 had a better indicator than pretty much anything not from Sony I've seen since.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#69

Post by rm999 »

glenra wrote: post #66
bwhite wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas stations are incredibly common. Public EV charging stations will never be as common unless a different business model is adopted. If EVs become common, people will have home charging stations. Demand for non-at-home charging stations will come from (1) folks who drive a lot and need to charge intraday (and who cannot charge at work) and (2) road trippers. The sum of both of these categories is fairly small and le…

Making people sit and wait for an hour whenever they need to recharge is just plain nuts. It makes the "road tripper" use case untenable. The right way to handle this for road trippers is to swap the battery packs or swap their contents. Don't make the driver wait while his battery is recharged - swap in a full pack and send him on his way. Charge the battery that was left behind slowly and at leisure, then give it t…

There's a company that's been working on swappable car batteries for some time now:

http://www.betterplace.com/

I agree with you that this is the only realistic mainstream future of electric vehicles as long as batteries remain in their current low-density state.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#70

Post by outworlder »

labcomputer wrote: post #44
malloreon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be different? Would he have been able to get where he wanted to go, or would he have not tried to go as far as the car said he could go?

>Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be different? So, I've been reading the forums at teslamotorsclub.com recently, and there are a lot of questions (and answers) about the Model S's range. From what has been written over there, it sounds like the car's speed has the biggest impact on range. In the NYT piece, I notice that the only time he mentions his speed is after it started to…

The reporter was testing the car. Therefore, it makes sense to drive it to its limits. And it is totally fine. However, you should then be prepared to suffer the consequences. In this case, towing.

Frankly, I dont get all this discussion about mileage. It seems like a perfectly good car for driving in the city already, which is where most of fuel is wasted.

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