151–160 of 178 posts
I never actually realized how much time it took to fill up a tank of gas! The next step is to get this working via a Knight Rider style truck so you never even have to stop moving.
Or even without a truck, if you weren't going as far, you could sell some of your energy to other cars behind you.
WCPGW?
I wonder if anyone has considered buying a Tesla (free recharges for life), driving home every day and finding a way to discharge the battery back into the grid through their meter to negate their home electricity bill.
This idea might be up there with saving on your electric bill by installing little turbines on all your water faucets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I've had this debate/argument many times with HN'ers. For some reason, people around here are unnaturally attached to the idea of owning a particular car battery. I've tried to see it from my interlocutors' point of view, but the point still isn't getting through to me, I'm afraid.
I agree. It strikes me as insane to swap out a ten-to-twenty thousand dollar piece of your car on any regular basis.
As an engineer I would have preferred to have seen a shot from under the car showing the actual process. It's unfortunate that they chose to record it from a hundred feet away. As for the reality of this swap deal. Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one. Option number two could be in the tho…
I think the business model needs to mimic that of the BetterPlace idea: Users of battery swapping stations pay a monthly fee, and the battery is seen more as a commodity which is rented by the user, but owned by the company. Coming back to get a battery is absurd, and should never happen.
You pay a fee to change the battery; The charging station then recharges it and swaps it to another tesla, and so on.
I wonder if anyone has considered buying a Tesla (free recharges for life), driving home every day and finding a way to discharge the battery back into the grid through their meter to negate their home electricity bill.
To me, the most surprising part is: Holy fuck, Audi's have huge petrol tanks! I usually fill up my reasonably priced car in like a minute or so and it gets a range of some 700 kilometers on a ~40 liter gas tank. 5 minutes for a petrol stop? That's insane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most US drivers are not getting 700 miles from a 12 US gallon tank (58 US MPG). The average fuel economy of US cars is 24.6 MPG. An Audi A6, in the US at least, gets 33 highway MPG and has a 19.8 gallon fuel tank. And yes, of course you charge the Tesla more often. You charge it every night when you come home, and it's ready with a full charge the next morning. That's just a totally different usage pattern from only…
Note that imperial gallons are substantially larger than the regular kind. A 10 imperial gallon tank holds 12 US gallons, and so 700 miles from a 10 imperial gallon tank is actually about 58MPG. Still very high, of course.
The only "regular" capacity unit that I know of comes from a deliberate attempt to normalize every units. Namely, the Litre from the metric system.
Smug Frenchman
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that imperial gallons are substantially larger than the regular kind. A 10 imperial gallon tank holds 12 US gallons, and so 700 miles from a 10 imperial gallon tank is actually about 58MPG. Still very high, of course.
Nitpick: regular kind? That's quite… culture centric. The only "regular" capacity unit that I know of comes from a deliberate attempt to normalize every units. Namely, the Litre from the metric system. Smug Frenchman
To me, the most surprising part is: Holy fuck, Audi's have huge petrol tanks! I usually fill up my reasonably priced car in like a minute or so and it gets a range of some 700 kilometers on a ~40 liter gas tank. 5 minutes for a petrol stop? That's insane.
You have to also factor in how many swapping stations they have in each "Tesla center". Typical gas station has at least 8 pumps larger about 16. Although, there is only a handful of Teslas, so possibility of a lineup is low.
As an engineer I would have preferred to have seen a shot from under the car showing the actual process. It's unfortunate that they chose to record it from a hundred feet away. As for the reality of this swap deal. Well, it sounds like a logistical pain in the ass. You are required to come back and get your original battery pack back or pay the difference in cost for the new one. Option number two could be in the tho…
I would have loved to see the details too. It takes a mechanic longer than 90 seconds to change a tire, so it's pretty impressive if they can really change a very heavy battery pack in that much time. I suppose it's probably using tech similar to what's on a factory floor. If you need to fasten/unfasten twelve bolts, and you want to do it very fast, you just use twelve separate air ratchets on a tooling. If you need…