We have 8 charging stations in my work parking lot free of charge. According to the folks who have the e-vehicles, when you’re done charging the courteous thing to do is move your car so another can use the spot. There’s an internal distribution list* that they all subscribe to to get notices. We have several leafs, volts, and I think at least 3 Tesla Model S vehicles.
*I think they probably use the distribution list to act smug 
One nice thing about the Volts not selling well is you can get a used one for a steal. Bought a 2012 for less than half of what a used one goes for. I have a 50 mile daily commute and I don’t recharge at work so I have to burn gas for 18 miles a every work day, but on the weekend, I use hardly any. It is a surprisingly nimble car with a nice quiet ride.
We’re in a transitional period from gas to electric and the pace will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I will take a serious look at the Model 3’s once they come out.
Which is why I said the (hopefully $35K) model 3 and not the current line.
I’ve seen a fair number of work places that have charging stations in prime parking spaces, closest to the entrances. I figured they were doing this just to be seen as a cutting-edge company, because out of all of them that I’ve seen, I’ve never seen a single car parked at one.
I think we have three charging stations in my home location, and certainly several more spread throughout the city that we own 75% of. They’re all free to use for up to four hours. If you don’t move your car, then you’re charged a 50¢ flat fee, and then something like $2.00 per hour thereafter. For commuting, four hours is more than enough time to get a charge. Registering a credit card or Paypal account is required for the program.
Oh, and of course you’re only allowed to charge vehicles that my company produces.
Unfortunately I live about 10 miles more than the electric range of the car I would want (a plug-in hybrid), so I’d still have to feed it gasoline for about 20 miles per day. If I opted for the one all-electric car we produce, I’d still have some range anxiety. What if the chargers are full at work? Will I be able to get home, or will I have to stay until 9:00 pm so until a charger becomes available? Sure, it says I have 36 miles of range left, but I don’t want that to change suddenly when I’m passing through Detroit.
Clearly you have a reading comprehension problem. Maybe if you actually thought with your head instead of your nether region you’d understand my point. I’m looking forward to electric cars. They just need to cross one tiny barrier. Fast charging batteries. That’s all it will take to replace gasoline powered vehicles AND a fair number of diesels overnight.
But you have such an irrational lovew for electrics that you refuse to acknowledge the barrier exists. It’s beyond your capacity to understand that today’s cars meet the needs of the vast majority of people and the Volt does not. Even though Jesus personally picked it out and and made it car of the year. If you squint when you look at it you’ll actually see the outline of a Jesus fish.
And yet, it’s sales SUCK. Nothing particularly wrong with the car except it only goes maybe 40 miles on a charge on a pleasant day. Then it performs worse than hybrids. Which perform worse than diesels. If it did what people wanted it to do it would sell.
Tesla announced a 200 mile car. With a solid roll date of someday. They’re marketing plan to date has been in the luxury market. People with money buying beautiful limited edition cars to fill their 3 car garage. They are not going to replace gasoline powered cars until batteries are fast charging.
Until batteries are fast charging they will be the barrier between
May I use this quote for an email sig?
(WAY off topic, but I love collecting out-of-context gems of wisdom from the Dope.
My favorite line ever is : “I store my bladder in the freezer”.
(from a thread about water containers )
Now, back to your previously scheduled Tesla thread.
(And, yes, Mr. moderator man, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again…but I gave in to temptation, and we’re deep into a long thread, so I hope a little humor won’t de-rail the thread
Are we down to ‘last man standing’ territory yet?
This far into any GD ‘debate’ it usually gets to this:
Consensus reached, but there is one holdout, and nobody is going to let the other have the last word.
Yes, for some people, the un-recharged range may be a deal-breaker.
For many/most, it will not be.
Many pages back, I suggested the idea of quick-swap batteries. Which, of course was too sensible to gain any traction.
Please tell your children that this concept is not new - in 50 years, it will be ‘Greenhouse Effect’ - ignored by those with vested interests until the polar ice caps started melting.
Exactly 100% this.
When we return to New Zealand we will be a two car family.
It’s very easy to imagine that, cost permitting, one of those cars will be a small electric for daily commuting. (the other a mid sized family wagon or SUV)
Christchurch, my home town, you would never have a daily (two way) commute of more than 80km. Even in the “worst case” of living in one of the satellite towns you’d be lucky if the commute reached 200 km.
So a 200 -300 mile range in an electric would be more than enough. Heck, even a 100 mile range would be enough with the sort of fast charge capability of a Tesla if the charging stations were about 30% as ubiquitous as gas stations.
You should know better than to insult another poster. Warning issued. Don’t do it again.
You should go back in time a few years and tell Tesla about this before they implemented it. There’s also other countries developing the infrastructure for swapping batteries like Israel. Suffice it to say, it’s not without its own economic challenges. The engineering is the easy part.
Technically, the question is whether the electric car (or the Tesla 3 in particular) will revolutionize driving. Niche products are not going to revolutionize driving.
Are electric cars viable, I’d say yes, in their niche. Like the sports car market in Colorado, people are going to buy them, but everyone who does needs to have a second car to do what the sports car can’t.
In order to revolutionize driving they have to get out of their niche, and be equal to or better than a regular ICE car. They can either give you more utility, which they don’t, or be cheaper, which they aren’t (without subsidies it isn’t even close).
I don’t think fast charging batteries are necessary to replace a good percentage of ICE vehicles, because for the foreseeable future, I just don’t think electrics have a place in the long-haul drive. But what I’m saying is, the road trip is a really small percentage of all the driving that happens in the U.S. Because of that, I simply don’t believe that electrics need to have another technological revolution before they begin to capture something like 20, 40, or maybe even 60 percent of new car sales maybe ten or so years from now.
I’m not impressed by the Volt, and you have never heard me say otherwise. Please don’t attribute statements or positions to me that I have never stated. I don’t think Chevy had a particularly good idea with trying to build a Frankstein-like mostly hybrid but kinda electric car. I don’t think the Plug In Priuses are worth the price, either.
I’ve made fun of Tesla’s… enthusiasm… for making huge announcements too. SpaceX does the same thing. Elon certainly likes attention, doesn’t he? But let me be clear here: my view is the main barrier for electrics to fundamentally change the car market is that they probably have to have a minimum range of 150 miles (which is very doable) and some models may have to get up to the 300+ range, and more importantly, there needs to be a diversity of options for the consumer. The Model 3 isn’t going to change the market by itself: it’s going to take the Model 3, the i3, the MB B Class, the VWs, and several other offerings. That seems to be coming along quite well. Consumers need to feel like they are in control of choosing which car they want: people will not go back to the adage about someone can have a Model T in any color they want so long as it is black. Consumers don’t want to be cornered into buying the Model 3 because it is the only good option for them: they are going to want to choose between a sedan, a crossover, a small SUV, a subcompact, and other designs that Tesla simply cannot produce by itself.
So long as people understand the advantages and disadvantages of electric cars, I don’t believe they need to believe that an electric car is better than an ICE in every way. I think that’s true of pretty much any consumer product: for quite a few years, everyone recognized that PCs were inferior to Macs in many substantive respects. But people still bought the shit out of PCs because they integrated better with what people wanted in various key aspects… not every aspect, but ones that were important to them.
Wait, who is the “they” in that sentence? I think you didn’t complete your thought. You said that rich people are buying special cars, but then you say that they aren’t going to buy them until the batteries are better?
They are definitely not cheaper now - but hybrids originally had a big markup also, and then came down to reasonable levels. We’re still early. In fact the Prius went from being a niche car to the biggest seller in California. The impediment there was not range, but price, but in my driving I exceed the range of an electric car only every three months at most.
I think the future is going to be the more efficient allocation of cars on an as-needed basis. You might own an electric for 90% of your driving, and then get a zip-car ICE car for long trips, and a truck for hauling. My truck is a neighborhood resource which our friends use whenever they have a big load.
Under this model electric cars with the expected improvements might be the biggest market segment, with other cars being shared as needed.
The Tesla 3 by itself probably won’t revolutionize anything - electric cars in general will.
But imagine this. Let’s assume that Tesla is willing to license their patent so that electric cars from other manufacturers can use the superchargers (and incidentally want to build more superchargers themselves). Since other manufactures see a demand for
- All electric
- $35K or less
- 250mi range or more
they start building cars in different styles thereby increasing demand and hence the landscape of American driving is revolutionized.
Is that an unreasonable prediction?
From what I’ve read, I think it’s going to be quite some time before there’s a 250 mile car that costs under $35k. At this moment, Tesla is selling a 250 mile car for more than twice the price, and recent news articles indicate that they are likely losing several thousand dollars on each sale. If I understand things correctly, the Gigafactory is supposed to reduce the cost of the Model S batteries by 30 percent. Thing is, nobody knows how much those batteries cost today. According to analysts, it could be close to $50,000. The same articles say Tesla people imply it is closer to $25,000.
Knowing Tesla’s penchant for consistent optimism (or as some might say, attention-getting BS), I would not bet a penny that those batteries are going to be cheap enough to drive a moderate-priced car long distances for quite some time to come.
This is a bit unfair. Sure, Musk talks big, but he’s also mostly delivered on his promises. The first two Teslas were miles beyond what any “whole company” was building at the time.
Maybe it’s because more people trust that Tesla can cut costs by 50% for the same range as opposed to Nissan tripling range for the same cost.
So much for winning the Cold War.
It is a Captain obvious moment that you ignore. when an electric vehicle runs out of charge it’s done for an extended period. When an ICE runs out of fuel you put more in and continue on with a 2 minute refueling.
actually not. Lithium batteries contain a flammable electrolyte. They are very susceptible to shorting. They are also susceptible to manufacturing flaws. There are thousands of batteries in a car. Only one has to be defective to start a fire. It’s inevitable that an electric car catches on fire and is caught on video. Make no mistake, it’s going to be quite a show.
When they burn they explode and produce a tremendous amount of smoke. The first car that burns down is going to create an irrational dislike for the batteries. It won’t matter if Tesla runs TV ads 24/7 showing babies on fire in ICE cars proving the irrationality of it.
The mid 80’s Olds diesel was such a POS that European companies stayed out of the US market for 20 years. We’re just now getting them back in the states despite huge sales in Europe. And considering they are capable of 65 mpg that’s saying something.
It was never new technology. They’ve literally stacked flashlight batteries together in giant containers. They sell because they’re fast and stylish and give green-Earth fans an excuse to buy a sports car. That’s been their market.
I own an airplane (well part of one). a 172 has a better range on 56 gallons then you’re giving it but lets look at the numbers. 140 mph. 9 gallons per hour fuel burn. 6.2 hrs of flight minus 1/2 hr reserve is 5.7 hrs x 140 mph is 800 miles. 5.7 hrs times 9 gallons is 51.3 gallons or 15.5 mpg. That’s a best theoretical range. Nobody ever bought an airplane because it saved them gas. It’s utility is a balance of speed, interior volume or special use such as aerobatics. The 172 is the best selling aircraft of all time because Cessna kept building them. It’s the VW Beetle of planes.
There are a number of electric planes in development. Might see 300 mile ranges with them. Just like electric cars, they can’t be used for travel. I don’t see a huge future in them until fast charge batteries but for ultra lights they might make some sales.