Tesla Electric Roadster

[Griff]

0 to 60 in four seconds seems to be a good way to break oils hold on us. Of course, I'm relying on you early adopters to foot the bill for the next few years.

[xoxoxoBruce]

250 miles on a charge may be max when not doing 4 second runs or 120 cruises. Stats are deceptive unless they're tied together.

I saw it on TV yesterday being test driven by the governator. Arnold liked it but he's a politician. Cute sports car for $100 grand but they said three more years development for a small sedan.

The MIT nano batteries may make it practical but it's still a question of where does the juice for a recharge come from?

I'm skeptical because there have been so many broken promises in the past, but hopeful somebody has finally got it right. I suspect somebody said, hey electric has a lot of good points but people won't even try it because all the electric cars to date have looked terribly uncool. Build a cute sportscar to win them over, then build something practical to sell.

[Griff]

Getting rid of shifting should be part of the pitch as well. I saw some car being advertised as having no "shift shock" and immediately thought, hey electrics don't have that.

[Undertoad]

Electrics don't have a standard gearbox?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Griff

0 to 60 in seconds seems to be a good way to break oils hold on us.

Cool. How would you be planning to charge the batts? Nuclear power?

Amusing that they named it after Tesla...

Originally Posted by http://www.keelynet.com/energy/teslafe1.htm

But it is a mystery car once demonstrated by Nikola Tesla, developer of alternating current, that might have made electrics triumphant.

Supported by the Pierce-Arrow Co. and General Electric in 1931, he took the gasoline engine from a new Pierce-Arrow and replaced it with an 80-horsepower alternating-current electric motor with no external power source.

At a local radio shop he bought 12 vacuum tubes, some wires and assorted resistors, and assembled them in a circuit box 24 inches long, 12 inches wide and 6 inches high, with a pair of 3-inch rods sticking out. Getting into the car with the circuit box in the front seat beside him, he pushed the rods in, announced, "We now have power," and proceeded to test drive the car for a week, often at speeds of up to 90 mph.

As it was an alternating-current motor and there were no batteries involved, where did the power come from?

Popular responses included charges of "black magic," and the sensitive genius didn't like the skeptical comments of the press. He removed his mysterious box, returned to his laboratory in New York - and the secret of his power source died with him.

Speaking of early adopters: Have you Hugged a Hummer Today?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Electrics don't have a standard gearbox?

Originally Posted by http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/business/19electric.html

It goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, “wicked fast,” said the company’s chairman, Martin Eberhard. Because it is an electric, the driver does not have to shift into second gear until the car hits 65, he said.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

Speaking of early adopters: Have you Hugged a Hummer Today?

"Energy cost per mile" in dollars?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

"Energy cost per mile" in dollars?

Oh...do you get your energy for free? In that case don't worry about it; it doesn't apply to you. :-)

[glatt]

A more useful unit of measure would be overall pollution emitted into the atmosphere for each mile driven.

A hybrid uses more energy in manufacture, where emmisions reduction equipment like scrubbers are able to limit pollution. A Hummer uses more energy on the road, where only a little catalytic converter is able to do anything with pollution, and that's only after it's had a chance to heat up.

I bet the Hummer pollutes more, even if it uses less energy overall, (a claim I'm skeptical about.)

The article is correct though, that

Originally Posted by article

Hybrid vehicles' overall energy costs exceed those of comparable non-hybrids

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

Oh...do you get your energy for free? In that case don't worry about it; it doesn't apply to you. :-)

It seems like if you're measuring the amount of energy it takes to construct and operate it, dollars isn't the proper unit. What question does that answer?

End user costs? The retail cost of most Hummers is more than most hybrids, even if you take into account a $3000 subsidy that Ford is losing per car, according to the article. The operating cost per mile will vary based on gas costs, but it's more for Hummers. So for the consumer, the hybrid is cheaper.

Environmental reasons? What difference do dollars make? Either measure total energy use or total pollution created. Converting it to dollars just seems obfuscatory.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Converting it to dollars just seems ofuscatory.

Well, not every erg costs the same. A kilowatt-hour bought off the electricity grid will have a different cost than when bought as gasoline in Hawaii. I think using cost as a rough measure of scarcity makes sense.

[Happy Monkey]

But the dollar says nothing about pollution. The same amount of gas will sometimes have a different cost from pumps across the street from each other, never mind across the country or world. Same with electricity off the grid (except for the across the street bit, usually).

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

But the dollar says nothing about pollution. The same amount of gas will sometimes have a different cost from pumps across the street from each other...

It's not supposed to say much about pollution...how much do you expect from one scalar quantity? It's one measure of total energy consumption.

I think you'll find not much difference in price between gas stations across the street from each other unless one station has some other enormous advangtage over the other. A few cents/gal one way or another doesn't move this measure much.

What's the matter, are you a hybrid owner or dealer or something?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

It's not supposed to say much about pollution...how much do you expect from one scalar quantity? It's one measure of total energy consumption.

That's what I'm trying to get at. If it's not about pollution, then what's the point? Why separate out energy costs from all the other costs if you aren't trying to make some sort of ecological point?

I think you'll find not much difference in price between gas stations across the street from each other unless one station has some other enormous advangtage over the other.

It doesn't happen often, and it's usually where it would be a big hassle to get across the road, but it does happen.

A few cents/gal one way or another doesn't move this measure much.

Except that the few cents is at the "across the street" level. The cost per gallon is much more variable the further apart the points are. As are all energy costs. So the calculation is based on a snapshot of a particular time and location and could vary wildly based on the ratios of the various types of energy costs.

What's the matter, are you a hybrid owner or dealer or something?

No, I have a regular gas-powered sedan. I just can't figure out what the point of the statistic is. Who is it directed at, and what decision is it supposed to help them make?

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Electrics don't have a standard gearbox?

You could conceivably have direct drive due to the electic motors high rpm. This car's motor is capable of 13,500 rpm.

As far as getting electricity, my first concern is weakening the power of the oil rich Arab states. That means everything is on the table coal, nuke, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, if it makes steam do it.