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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

#121

Post by confluence »

hyperbovine wrote: post #119
jblow wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So to get an electric car that affords me as much freedom as a fossil burner I /only/ need to drop $102k? Sign me up! /s Electric cars will have won when normal people can afford them. I hope that'll be soon, but it's definitely not the case right now.

You can -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf.

It'll take a few more years for mainstream adoption - but it'll hit. Tesla Model S is like the Apple I - only rich smart people own them.

The Apple II is when things get really crazy - that's when middle-class smart people own them.

See plan here: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-p...

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#122

Post by confluence »

mibbitier wrote: post #101
revelation wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal combustion engines are not at all simple. Sleek animations might make it seem like that, but when you are blowing stuff up , that tends to complicate things. In comparison, electrical motors are extremely simple and maintenance-free. All while being on a level of efficiency that just can't be reached with a combustion engine.

Burning coal to make electricity, then transmitting that electricity all over the country, wasting some of it along the way... Then using that to charge a battery, then using that to power a motor. I'm not sure it sounds particularly efficient unless you completely ignore all the work that goes into making the electricity :/

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 electric engines are ~92% efficient. That's burn to road of ~20-30%. Even without taking into account the extra costs of doing stuff with the oil to put it into your car, and having that priced with electric - electric is still better. There's a reason we electrified our trains, and a reason that diesel trains actually use their diesel engines to run electric motors.

Here are Tesla's calculations:

http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency (look at the final well-to-wheel efficiency - you'll notice it's a little more than double ICE engines).

We're also ignoring the cost of pollution that ICE vehicles bring (it's a lot more than power plants - which because they are centralized, can economically mitigate the release of pollution). If you price that into ICE, they lose pretty badly - because pollution is not, and never should have been free.

It's a resource you use and abuse to the detriment of everyone else.

Fundamentally you must understand this and this only:

Electric vehicles are 2x as efficient as ICE vehicles and cost less on a total cost of ownership basis.

They have won so badly that only willful ignorance can stop one from avoiding such an obvious conclusion (Innovator's dilemma).

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#123

Post by jblow »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #102
jblow wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this "electric grid can't handle it" is another piece of anti-EV FUD that is not representative of the situation in reality. Right now, peak electricity usage times are during the day. This is why in most urban areas electricity is cheaper at night: they want to encourage you to distribute your usage more evenly throughout the day. The NEMA 14-50 (a.k.a. standard appliance outlet that most people plug their d…

Oh, hey, this is JM from RAD. Didn't see your user name at first. :) Re: 220V outlets, it's surprisingly hard to find the true average power consumption by a dryer, now that I just tried. I do know that the heating element in a dryer is usually rated for 5000 watts+, but you have to keep in mind that it doesn't run at a 100% duty cycle, even on high heat. (I can't find anything that talks about what the typical duty…

Oh, hey dude.

40 amps at 200v will completely charge a Roadster in something like 7 hours. I don't know how long for a Model S, but it is probably longer. I am only familiar with the day-in, day-out of the Roadster so I will stick to that mostly.

So the "charge the car all night (7-8 hours) scenario" only makes sense if you need to charge up the battery 100%, i.e. you were on fumes before you plugged it in, which means you drove 200-240 miles the day before. This may be true for some people but it is not going to be true for most people most of the time.

I drive from SF to Berkeley and back most work days, a 25-minute commute each way, and I like to drive it like a sports car, so I use relatively a lot of power for that length of trip. Generally I use about 20% of the Roadster's battery on such a day, so that's probably about 1.5 hours to charge in a 220V outlet. If everyone did that, you would probably want to stagger the charging times, but it is totally doable even with current setups.

I do think that there would be some increased power draw and that we would want to beef up our electricity infrastructure a little. But that is pretty different than what I see as a Republican talking point, which is something like "there is no way that the USA can support everyone plugging in their EV, it's impossible." That is not my experience as an EV driver.

When I was coming up with the dryer analogy I was just using numbers I pulled off the Internet about what people were measuring their dryer's pull at. It's possible dryers just are not very efficient, I don't know! (Though I thought the whole Energy Star thing was supposed to put pressure on that).

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#124

Post by aidenn0 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #102
jblow wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this "electric grid can't handle it" is another piece of anti-EV FUD that is not representative of the situation in reality. Right now, peak electricity usage times are during the day. This is why in most urban areas electricity is cheaper at night: they want to encourage you to distribute your usage more evenly throughout the day. The NEMA 14-50 (a.k.a. standard appliance outlet that most people plug their d…

Oh, hey, this is JM from RAD. Didn't see your user name at first. :) Re: 220V outlets, it's surprisingly hard to find the true average power consumption by a dryer, now that I just tried. I do know that the heating element in a dryer is usually rated for 5000 watts+, but you have to keep in mind that it doesn't run at a 100% duty cycle, even on high heat. (I can't find anything that talks about what the typical duty…

And this would be a problem if half the ICE car owning public went out and bought electric cars all in the same month. There will be time to upgrade the distribution grid.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#125

Post by kerryfalk »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #100
kerryfalk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very strange and foreign reasoning to me. I competitively raced cars in an amateur series. You are claiming that the Tesla's superior throttle response makes it faster 0-60. The car needs to move the weight, so measuring it from when it starts moving to when it hits the desired speed seems like a perfectly reasonable metric. Throttle response needs to be measured separately. The M5 comparison is more than eno…

It's not throttle response, it's torque at 0RPM. When you're racing, you rev your engine before the light turns green and pop the clutch when it turns green. You don't do that when you're not racing, because it's hard on clutches, and the vast majority of daily drivers are automatics. When you're racing an electric car, you mash the accelerator when the light turns green, the same way you start the car moving when yo…

Only electric vehicles start at 0 RPM. Normal combustion engines idle under 1,000 RPM and the M5 has a fairly flat torque curve for a naturally aspirated car with somewhere around 260lbs at idle. That's very good and about 50% of its peak torque.

The M5s also have SMG which is a computer controlled manual transmission. No manually operated clutch. Even has a launch mode if you want the computer to control wheel spin for you so you get the best possible launch.

Throttle response is still the wrong metric to use here. And is a bit of a red herring in the discussion.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#126

Post by knowtheory »

confluence wrote: post #122
mibbitier wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning coal to make electricity, then transmitting that electricity all over the country, wasting some of it along the way... Then using that to charge a battery, then using that to power a motor. I'm not sure it sounds particularly efficient unless you completely ignore all the work that goes into making the electricity :/

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)

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#127

Post by jlgreco »

mibbitier wrote: post #108
jblow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning coal / electricity / oil to explore, drill, transport, refine, and re-transport oil ... Then using that to fill your car, so you can blow it up inside an engine. Sounds a little less efficient than the electricity thing when you look at the full sequence. And this is even in the case where electricity comes from dirty sources; some states, like California, have an energy mix where electricity comes mostly fro…

Difference is though, with an internal combustion engine, the "turning fuel into power" happens inside the car. Whereas with electric cars, it happens at a power plant... then gets sent to the car via electricity, with lots of it wasted along the way. Personally, I don't see electric cars as solving anything. We should be looking at generating the power in the car, from things that are plentiful - water, dirt, garbag…

If cars were really as efficient as you seem to think, then we should be replacing all of our coal burning power plants with massive stacks of car engines.

Of course power plants are much more efficient.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#128

Post by jlgreco »

chc wrote: post #94
jblow wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Aren't EVs totally unusable if you live in an apartment? That was my impression when I looked into them. Like, how would I charge a car in my parking stall?

My (new) apartment building has power hookups for EVs. I have seen two or three using them.

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#129

Post by confluence »

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)

You don't have access to cheap/easy oil in those disaster situations either.

Furthermore subcontinental Asia is driving the adoption of tiny electric vehicles - China has over 130 million electric scooters (and that's from a few years ago - the numbers are going insane).

Re: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

#130

Post by jblow »

kerryfalk wrote: post #125
bryanlarsen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not throttle response, it's torque at 0RPM. When you're racing, you rev your engine before the light turns green and pop the clutch when it turns green. You don't do that when you're not racing, because it's hard on clutches, and the vast majority of daily drivers are automatics. When you're racing an electric car, you mash the accelerator when the light turns green, the same way you start the car moving when yo…

Only electric vehicles start at 0 RPM. Normal combustion engines idle under 1,000 RPM and the M5 has a fairly flat torque curve for a naturally aspirated car with somewhere around 260lbs at idle. That's very good and about 50% of its peak torque. The M5s also have SMG which is a computer controlled manual transmission. No manually operated clutch. Even has a launch mode if you want the computer to control wheel spin…

My 2006 M3 had SMG and I didn't like it much. (Fine for highway driving, sucks for city street driving). Maybe the new one is better?
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