Tesla electric car
Posted by: DWallach
Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 17:35
Ooh, shiny!
Wired article,
Jalopnik blog article,
vendor home page.
In short, it's (approximately) a battery-powered Lotus Elise. 0-60 in 4.0 seconds. 250 mile range on a full charge. Top speed: ~130mph. Two forward gears (no need for more when you've got a flat torque curve and a red line of 13.5Krpm). Price? "Roughly $80K." That's one hell of a toy, and for an entirely reasonable price.
Posted by: sein
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 18:36
Video.
Looks like a fabulous car, with a very usable range too. Can't be too long until we see one in the 'Installation Guides' section
Posted by: loren
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 21:03
Me wanty. I love the salespitch near the end... not only are you buying this car, you are helping to pay for future development of mass market electric cars."
Here's what I want to know. Has anyone calculated the difference in emissions that it takes to make the energy to charge the car compared to the emissions if the car were actually gas powered?
Posted by: Waterman981
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 21:22
From the
Tesla FAQ:Quote:
When you take into account the efficiency of producing the electricity it uses, the Tesla Roadster is more than twice as efficient as the best hybrid car on the road.
That FAQ does have lots of good questions answered there.
Quote:
Q: Does the Tesla Roadster's stereo have a mini jack so I can plug in my iPod?
A: Even better! The Tesla Roadster allows you to connect your iPod to the stereo using Apple's dock connector which not only charges your iPod but also gives you basic control of your iPod using the controls on the stereo. This way the iPod can sit safely in the tray under the center console while you play, pause, skip, fast-forward or reverse using your stereo controls.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 21:25
They say it's only costs a few cents a mile (as opposed to, give or take ten cents a mile, assuming 30mpg and $3 gas), and I imagine that price of energy and pollution of energy are somewhat vaguely related.
Posted by: tanstaafl.
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 22:45
Has anyone calculated the difference in emissions that it takes to make the energy to charge the car compared to the emissions if the car were actually gas powered?
Oh, yes. I don't have the numbers handy, but be assured, the pollution from generating the electricity is much greater than the car would produce burning gasoline. Now, this blanket statement makes some assumptions... that the electricity is produced by a coal-burning powerplant (the majority of electricity in the US is produced this way), and does not factor in the pollution created by the production/refinement of the gasoline from the original crude oil. Other factors include the pollution created by the production of the batteries in the car, and the problems of periodic replacement/disposal of said batteries.
This makes it difficult to come up with a simple yes/no answer, but if you restrict the variables to pollution emitted by the powerplant vs pollution out the tailpipe of a modern car, the car is cleaner.
Modern cars run so cleanly compared to years past that you can't even off yourself in the time-honored tradition of firing up your car in the garage and dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Some years ago (5 years? Maybe even 10) Saab announced their new Trionic emission contol system, where they claimed that in a heavily polluted environment (say, downtown Los Angeles in rush hour) the exhaust coming out the tailpipe was cleaner than the air going into the intake.
tanstaafl.
Posted by: tanstaafl.
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 22:59
They say it's only costs a few cents a mile (as opposed to, give or take ten cents a mile, assuming 30mpg and $3 gas),
Yeah, until you factor in the additional 23 cents per mile it's costing you to amortize the extra $35,000 cost of the car over the 150,000 mile life expectancy of the vehicle.
(Lotus Elise: $45,000. "Tesla Elise": $80,000. Price difference: $35,000.
Cost per mile of $35,000 over 150,000 miles: $35,000/150,000 = $.23, or 23 cents per mile.)
tanstaafl.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 23:06
Hmm. What are the recycling opportunities for lithium ion batteries?
Posted by: tanstaafl.
Re: Tesla electric car - 20/07/2006 23:27
Hmm. What are the recycling opportunities for lithium ion batteries?
Any revenue generated by recycling the batteries would certainly be less money than the loss of value of the car itself if you then tried to sell it without any batteries at all, and the cost of replacing the batteries at that point would only serve to run the cost per mile figure up even higher.
And, given the experience we all have with lithium ion battery life excpectancy in laptops and other devices.... 150,000 miles is a very generous estimate of how long they might last.
tanstaafl.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 00:20
I meant as far as ecology, not the monetary remuneration.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 00:31
The Tesla is never going to be a winner on cost alone and no Tesla buyer is getting it under any illusion of saving money. It's "rational" to buy the car, relative to a normal Elise, if you feel that the electric drivetrain (and the general exclusivity of thing) is worth the premium. For the dot-com millionaires who appear to be the target market, the marginal cost per mile arguments are there as much for cocktail chatter as to make a business case for future electric cars, when they can get down the production costs.
Personally, I'm waiting for Jeremy Clarkson to get his hands on one and tear it to bits on Top Gear. You know they would do some sort of side-to-side comparison with a standard Elise (or maybe one with an aftermarket turbo or something, so the 0-60 times are closer).
Posted by: music
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 01:03
Quote:
Hmm. What are the recycling opportunities for lithium ion batteries?
I believe the FAQ section on the Tesla website mentions that the initial cost of the car means they already billed you for the recycling of the initial set of batteries. They mention that you can be in and out in a few hours with a total battery replacement. It's somewhat unclear if that first replacement is "already paid for" or not. But at least the recycling/disposal cost is covered.
Also of note: If you pick the "solar" option, you don't get solar panels on the car to recharge it, but instead some solar plant somewhere drops an amount of energy into the grid equal to the amount you suck out on every recharge.
I guess if it helps you sleep better at night.... 
In any case, this seems to be an awesome achievement, proving that electric cars don't have to be slow, ugly, and ultra-short-range.
They can in fact be pretty enough to show up on a poster above a young boy's bed, fast enough to occupy his daydreams, and almost practical.
Now, they just need to knock the price down by a factor of four, finally whip the toxic recycling issues, and completely put to rest any safety concerns that so much concentrated battery weight, energy, and chemicals cause.
(And I think they will eventually lick these issues. And the "dot-com millionaire market" is the right place to start with this product. Note also, that they are limiting distribution to only 3 states unless you pay an extra $10,000.)
Posted by: loren
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 05:04
I don't know the stats but the whole "electric car" thing gives me the same feeling I get when I see the commercials for GM "green" corn powered ethanol vehicles. The amount of oil and environmental (not to mention economic) destruction that goes into growing corn already is just astounding... why do we need to make a fleet of vehicles that demands more of it, merely offsetting the source of the oil based pollution to something else, namely production of "green" fuel? What would we do if electric cars became a fast success... in CA we have power shortages as it is! I can't imagine if there were tens of thousands of cars plugged in. Are hydrogen fuel cell cars the answer? Or does production of hydrogen produce pollution as well?
edit:
I read this article a few days ago. It's sort of rambling but has lots of interesting conjectures. It talks about net energy, agriculture's role in sopping up oil energy, and the waste associated with processing foods in ways most of us don't consider.
Seriously... this article is LONG, but you REALLY should read it.
The Oil We Eat:
http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html
Posted by: music
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 05:47
Quote:
I can't imagine if there were tens of thousands of cars plugged in. Are hydrogen fuel cell cars the answer? Or does production of hydrogen produce pollution as well?
I imagine the power you get back from chemically combining the hydrogen is just slightly less than the amount you expended earlier tearing the hydrogen atom off of some {water,petrochemical} molecule when you built the fuel cell.
(Oh wait, I seem to remember that the hydrogen fuel cells work through some kind of membrane osmosis method rather than chemical bonding. Well, in any case, you have to pump energy back in later to "de-osmosify" the hydrogen atoms. And the laws of thermodynamics say that you're going to lose that game every time.)
So in that sense, it must be just like the electric cars. It's "clean" because you have hidden the big dirty energy generation factory in someone else's back yard....
(I know that they're looking at using living plantlife to generate the hydrogen from solar energy biologically, but it boggles the mind to think of the sunny acreage required if that becomes our primary method of energy production. And this pessimism is coming from a guy that uses a solar hot water heater (namely me).)
It seems to me that the right answer would be:
cars driven from
electricity
generated from
nuclear power
made in reverse-breeding reactors.
With the only bad waste products being:
- excess heat from the reactors, and
- eventual radioactivity of the some of the tubing/components/etc. of the plant.
I guess it depends how much of a fantasy these "reverse-breeding reactors" are in order to avoid the usual nuclear waste disposal issues from conventional fission reactors.
A lot of people don't realize that already today more than 20% of U.S. electricity generation comes from nuclear plants, despite the fact that we haven't opened a single new nuclear plant in over 25 years.
Posted by: Roger
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 10:07
Quote:
why do we need to make a fleet of vehicles that demands more of it
Because then you're not beholden to a third-world tin-pot theocracy?
Posted by: frog51
Me wanty this even more: - 21/07/2006 11:48
At work at the moment, so can't do a full search, but use your google-fu and check out the Barabus TKR...unveiled at the motor show this week. A 270 mph (yes 270 Miles Per Hour) nutter car! Okay, so it costs £300,000, but that is less than a third of the price of a Bugatti Veyron!
Posted by: sein
Re: Me wanty this even more: - 21/07/2006 13:31
Quote:
At work at the moment, so can't do a full search, but use your google-fu and check out the Barabus TKR...unveiled at the motor show this week. A 270 mph (yes 270 Miles Per Hour) nutter car! Okay, so it costs £300,000, but that is less than a third of the price of a Bugatti Veyron!
The Barabus website is here. Autoblog.nl have some in the metal photos at the London Motor Show (I'm going tomorrow by the way, any other Empeggers going to be there?).
Anyway, I give this car a squint and a raised eyebrow. The front looks fantastic, but the rear is very much a Pagani Zonda gone very wrong.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Me wanty this even more: - 21/07/2006 18:04
Very sweet car, although given how low it rides to the ground, it's not exactly something you'd use as a daily commuting vehicle. Not that I wouldn't mind having one, so long as somebody was paying for the gas and the insurance.
(This also raises the question: is there such a thing as too much horsepower in a daily driver?)
Posted by: altman
Re: Tesla electric car - 21/07/2006 19:33
Well, maybe yes & no. Cars like the Prius are very, very careful with their cells, and don't do anywhere near 100% cycling of the cells in order to extend their life. I would hope that the same is being done in the Tesla. I would suspect that this extends their useful life at least 2x, maybe more - it does on NiMH cells.
Hugo
Posted by: music
Re: Me wanty this even more: - 21/07/2006 22:02
Quote:
(This also raises the question: is there such a thing as too much horsepower in a daily driver?)
Yes. Yes there is.
Posted by: frog51
Re: Me wanty this even more: - 22/07/2006 13:53
Heh heh - no there isn't
Depends entirely on what the daily drive is
I like my 340 bhp - is good for coming out of all the 90 degree bends and roundabouts I find on my way into town of a morning
Posted by: Cris
Re: Me wanty this even more: - 25/07/2006 20:17
Just found a
Hydrogen Model Car, not quite as impressive as it's bigger cousin
Cheers
Cris.