Will it launch with a extra $20,000 on the sticker price and 100 miles off the range, just like the Roadster? :P
It's $40,000 just to get on the initial waiting list.
As cool as this thing is, please wake me up when someone finally prices a car like this in the 30k range without a tax credit. Until then I consider it a gimmick to drive company brand recognition and little else.
I like where Tesla is going with this, I think they've made more progress than any of the major auto manufacturers. My concern still is the range. 300 miles is great and all, that's about what my 14 gallon tank gets right now but if I need to travel somewhere that's > 300 miles away, I can refill my tank in minutes, instead of 4 hours. Aside from affordibility, which they've made great progress on (down 50% in price from the Roadster), recharge time decrease or increased distance should be the next priority.
This is why I perfer hybrids to electrics - owning an electric basically requires that you also still own a gas car that you can use on longer trips. And it's not like you can say when buying a car that never in the next decade will you need to drive >300 miles.
It might work better in a place like Europe where there's trains everywhere, but in America long drives are a lot more commonplace.
Notice the "change" bit there, that doesn't mean charge:
I'd also like to know what kind of fucking car takes more than eight minutes to fill up with gas. o_O
SUVs have tanks up to 40 gallons. That will take a while to fill.
We're not talking SUVs, we're talking cars. Take your SUV bullshit and get to soccer practice.
Anyways, yes, they can change the battery for you in 5-8 minutes. That's not bad, but it's not the best solution. What if you pull up and they're still charging batteries? What if they're underhanded and give you a half charged battery and you can''t even make it to the next battery change station?
I'd much rather have quicker recharge times over battery swaps.
Yeah, but now you have battery cycles to compete with - the more you deplete and recharge a battery, the less of a charge it's gonna hold. I think a 1000 cycles is the average these days, and during that count to a 1,000, it's going to progressively hold less and less of a charge.
How this works as a sustainable and palatable business model is beyond me. Eventually the novelty of owning a EV is going to wear off when you can't make it from point A to B.
I like where Tesla is going with this, I think they've made more progress than any of the major auto manufacturers. My concern still is the range. 300 miles is great and all, that's about what my 14 gallon tank gets right now but if I need to travel somewhere that's > 300 miles away, I can refill my tank in minutes, instead of 4 hours. Aside from affordibility, which they've made great progress on (down 50% in price from the Roadster), recharge time decrease or increased distance should be the next priority.
This is why I perfer hybrids to electrics - owning an electric basically requires that you also still own a gas car that you can use on longer trips. And it's not like you can say when buying a car that never in the next decade will you need to drive >300 miles.
It might work better in a place like Europe where there's trains everywhere, but in America long drives are a lot more commonplace.
This is why I see it as a car for families for the time being. It's easy enough to use the second car that you already have, for your vacation trips.
If the battery replacement was less of a cost ($1000 would be a great number) and the instant recharge stations were cheap ($2 a recharge) then I could definitely see the benefits of phasing it out. As it stands, it's still slightly too expensive.
You're also forgetting that there are no quick recharges with the Tesla. It can take 3 hours to recharge a 300 mile battery pack. I don't know if this quick charge is as quick as anyone says it is.
Also, here's a Tesla blog about energy consumption with the car, tis a good read.
I'd much rather have quicker recharge times over battery swaps.
And I'd rather be able to fly like superman, but physics get in the way.
vastly quicker recharge times are a very long way off. And Tesla isn't going to be the one to make that breakthrough.
How about that bluetooth recharging system? Maybe that could be taken into effect.
It would need to be scaled up considerably but we are now able to charge things over bluetooth and they're thinking of having mobile phones being able to link up to stations all over cities as you walk around them, just recharging themselves.
If you could have a car constantly recharging little by little as you drive about that would be useful. We have also been able to speed up recharge times a little on small objects with specialized battery packs, but I don't think we have the voltage capabilities to do it with something as big as a car yet.
I'd much rather have quicker recharge times over battery swaps.
And I'd rather be able to fly like superman, but physics get in the way.
vastly quicker recharge times are a very long way off. And Tesla isn't going to be the one to make that breakthrough.
How about that bluetooth recharging system? Maybe that could be taken into effect.
It would need to be scaled up considerably but we are now able to charge things over bluetooth and they're thinking of having mobile phones being able to link up to stations all over cities as you walk around them, just recharging themselves.
If you could have a car constantly recharging little by little as you drive about that would be useful. We have also been able to speed up recharge times a little on small objects with specialized battery packs, but I don't think we have the voltage capabilities to do it with something as big as a car yet.
Somehow I doubt this would ever work for anything bigger than a remote controlled toy.
Now that these are getting more reasonable, I'm curious how they'd work in cold climates where it can get to -40C (-50C with wind chill). Is there any effect on operation of the vehicle and recharging time/battery life?
Now that these are getting more reasonable, I'm curious how they'd work in cold climates where it can get to -40C (-50C with wind chill). Is there any effect on operation of the vehicle and recharging time/battery life?
I'd imagine an EV would be completely useless in that climate.
I'm curious how well the batteries stand up to the cold.
In Canada we already have power hookups in about many of our parking lots (least where I live right now) because it gets so cold in the winter you have to plug in your car if it's being parked for more then a few hours.
Price is important, and right now things might not look great but this recession will be ending sometime and when it does gas is going to start going up in price again. I'm confident electric cars will be cost competitive with gas guzzlers within my lifetime.
I'd much rather have quicker recharge times over battery swaps.
And I'd rather be able to fly like superman, but physics get in the way.
vastly quicker recharge times are a very long way off. And Tesla isn't going to be the one to make that breakthrough.
How about that bluetooth recharging system? Maybe that could be taken into effect.
Didn't they try and embed a electrical grid in the roads a while ago, and it could wirelessly recharge a EV? Or do I need to lay off the crack pipe?
I've never heard of it, but I don't know. Was it to charge trams or something? Because Electric cars aren't really widely available enough to warrant this yet.
Somehow I doubt this would ever work for anything bigger than a remote controlled toy.
Unless the application is that it charges your car while you're sitting at work or something?
If it takes a night at home to recharge with the thing plugged in, you'd probably have to spend a week or two at the office to get anything out of it. It'd be infinitely more reasonable to suggest that office parking lots install outlets.
Cell phones don't need to move anything, it makes a big difference.
Somehow I doubt this would ever work for anything bigger than a remote controlled toy.
Unless the application is that it charges your car while you're sitting at work or something?
If it takes a night at home to recharge with the thing plugged in, you'd probably have to spend a week or two at the office to get anything out of it. It'd be infinitely more reasonable to suggest that office parking lots install outlets.
Cell phones don't need to move anything, it makes a big difference.
This is my point. My office already has outlets, I spend my bosses electricity on my car's block heater/battery all winter already. If cold doesn't rape this car in some way it seems ideal for northern places where people are already well used to plugging in their cars.
I'm curious how well the batteries stand up to the cold.
In Canada we already have power hookups in about many of our parking lots (least where I live right now) because it gets so cold in the winter you have to plug in your car if it's being parked for more then a few hours.
Price is important, and right now things might not look great but this recession will be ending sometime and when it does gas is going to start going up in price again. I'm confident electric cars will be cost competitive with gas guzzlers within my lifetime.
Probably, but it looks a lot less likely that they're going to be cost-competetive with efficient cars.
So.... we've kind of destroyed this car haven't we? Obviously they have a lot of kinks to un-kink and they need to think about a few of the things intelligent consumers are going to know is smoke being blown up their arse in the form of "environmentally friendly".
It's pretty, but it's also pretty damn expensive. It would be pretty hard for me, for example, to recoup the extra up-front cost plus the battery replacements.
Math below:
A quick comparison to a 2009 Honda Accord, assuming a ten year car lifetime:
Upfront: $50,000 vs $22,400 (starting prices)
Replacement battery pack: $5,000 vs $0
Other maintenance costs: Who knows? But given the relatively scarcity of mechanics familiar with Teslas, I expect it'd cost like crazy to take it in. I won't include that in the calculations.
$32,600 over ten years is $3,260 a year to make up, $8.93 a day.
Mileage/Cost:
Let's assume the Honda averages 25 mpg. At prices of $2 per gallon, that's 8 cents per mile. If gas prices went back up to $4 per gallon, it's 16 cents per mile.
For the Tesla, I can only do an extraordinarily rough estimate. Assuming a standard 220V, 30A outlet setup and given the four hour advertised charging time, that's 26.4 kWh for 300 miles, or .088 kWh per mile. At average Illinois prices, that comes out to about 1 cent per mile, or 100 miles per dollar.
So, at current gas prices you're saving 7 cents per mile by driving the Tesla. You'd have to drive an average of 127 miles a day to break even, and more to save money. At $4 a gallon, you're saving 15 cents a gallon and only have to average 59.5 miles a day (or a 40 mile commute each way every work day).
tldr; Worth it if you commute a pretty long way every day and you expect gas prices to double again. Of course, if you're planning on buying a luxury car anyway then it's a much more even comparison and probably worth it.
So.... we've kind of destroyed this car haven't we? Obviously they have a lot of kinks to un-kink and they need to think about a few of the things intelligent consumers are going to know is smoke being blown up their arse in the form of "environmentally friendly".
I'm not even aware of them selling it that way, so if they are it's not being pushed hard. The marketing of their first model was - it's fast as hell, and doesnt use gas.
So.... we've kind of destroyed this car haven't we? Obviously they have a lot of kinks to un-kink and they need to think about a few of the things intelligent consumers are going to know is smoke being blown up their arse in the form of "environmentally friendly".
I'm not even aware of them selling it that way, so if they are it's not being pushed hard. The marketing of their first model was - it's fast as hell, and doesnt use gas.
I think the "doesn't use gas" bit makes people think "environmentally friendly", as people have come to freely associate it with not using fossil fuels so hi5.
It's fast as hell, but as something so difficult to get recharged and with the cost of replacement, I don't think it will be seen as a better alternative to petrol/diesel cars.
Hydrogen seems to be making better advances that way at the moment.
So.... we've kind of destroyed this car haven't we? Obviously they have a lot of kinks to un-kink and they need to think about a few of the things intelligent consumers are going to know is smoke being blown up their arse in the form of "environmentally friendly".
I'm not even aware of them selling it that way, so if they are it's not being pushed hard. The marketing of their first model was - it's fast as hell, and doesnt use gas.
I think the "doesn't use gas" bit makes people think "environmentally friendly", as people have come to freely associate it with not using fossil fuels so hi5.
It's fast as hell, but as something so difficult to get recharged and with the cost of replacement, I don't think it will be seen as a better alternative to petrol/diesel cars.
Hydrogen seems to be making better advances that way at the moment.
viable hydrogen cars are like 15 years out, minimum. They are just wayyyy too expensive right now to produce. EV's and electric heavy Hybrid's (the volt) are where it's going to be at for quite awhile.
viable hydrogen cars are like 15 years out, minimum. They are just wayyyy too expensive right now to produce. EV's and electric heavy Hybrid's (the volt) are where it's going to be at for quite awhile.
I think they're taking more visible strides than electric cars when it comes to being a useful alternative to fossil fuels. Although, I do agree that it's going to be a good few years yet before they become anywhere near mainstream buys.
I don't think electric cars like the Tesla vehicles are going to be the future though.
I don't think there is really any reason you couldn't have a wireless charging system built into the parking lot. You could manage over a foot or so ok, but it would cost a whole lot more than 220v or 440v cords. It would need to be pretty severely over-engineered too, because you'd be talking about pretty large amounts of electricity where folks would be walking about in the rain. It's just not terribly practical, and you don't gain a lot if you are just talking about recharging while parked.
Even though it would be prohibitively expensive, from just an engineering standpoint, dropping the power plant from one of these into a fairly standard sedan sized car, probably wouldn't be too hard. These motors tend to be pretty small. With as much torque as it puts out and the wide powerband, all you are really doing is dropping the engine in and then getting the power to the final drive(which would probably new), and then finding somewhere for the battery packs and computers. The weight distribution would end up a bit different, so the suspension might want some work. Once this stuff becomes affordable, conversions should be fairly practical.
This doesn't seem like a terribly light vehicle, and it's got fairly impressive numbers, conversions using similar gas powered models would likely be roughly comparable. Currently available batteries and motors make it more involved and less rewarding.
edit: MIT, I think, recently found a neat way of coating the terminals of a Li-ion battery so that they charge almost at almost super capacitor. None of the processes are particularly expensive either. It could realistically be a in production in less than a decade, if it works as well and simply as they've said. If it happens and we clean up the production process and get decent recycling in place, it could be better than hydrogen.
There are currently affordable electric cars, they just don't have the same numbers and a top speed of, like 65 mph or less, so they're more intended to be urban/local cars rather than commuter. Well, ignoring the fact that commuting on the highway generally doesn't break 40mph with traffic around here. Being less than half the price is a pretty good selling point, though.
It's pretty, but it's also pretty damn expensive. It would be pretty hard for me, for example, to recoup the extra up-front cost plus the battery replacements.
Math below:
A quick comparison to a 2009 Honda Accord, assuming a ten year car lifetime:
Upfront: $50,000 vs $22,400 (starting prices)
Replacement battery pack: $5,000 vs $0
Other maintenance costs: Who knows? But given the relatively scarcity of mechanics familiar with Teslas, I expect it'd cost like crazy to take it in. I won't include that in the calculations.
$32,600 over ten years is $3,260 a year to make up, $8.93 a day.
Mileage/Cost:
Let's assume the Honda averages 25 mpg. At prices of $2 per gallon, that's 8 cents per mile. If gas prices went back up to $4 per gallon, it's 16 cents per mile.
For the Tesla, I can only do an extraordinarily rough estimate. Assuming a standard 220V, 30A outlet setup and given the four hour advertised charging time, that's 26.4 kWh for 300 miles, or .088 kWh per mile. At average Illinois prices, that comes out to about 1 cent per mile, or 100 miles per dollar.
So, at current gas prices you're saving 7 cents per mile by driving the Tesla. You'd have to drive an average of 127 miles a day to break even, and more to save money. At $4 a gallon, you're saving 15 cents a gallon and only have to average 59.5 miles a day (or a 40 mile commute each way every work day).
tldr; Worth it if you commute a pretty long way every day and you expect gas prices to double again. Of course, if you're planning on buying a luxury car anyway then it's a much more even comparison and probably worth it.
The cost of buying the battery, per day, is $3.43 (5000/4/365), assuming a 4 year time, and $5000 for the cheapest battery. At 165 miles, and an average 25 mile commute (24.3 according to the US census) a day you'd recharge once a week. Recharging a battery that size may be expensive, I'd need to know those numbers first.
The cost of filling up a 10 gallon tank at $2 a gallon is $20. Assuming an average 25 MPG car, that's 250 miles a fill up. That's almost two weeks a fillup. That's $80 a month, or $2.63 a day (this number is slightly higher when factoring in extra travel).
The gas prices would need to be close to $5.25ish a gallon to be close to the same costs. That's not factoring in some minor things like extra travel, longer commutes, recharge costs of the battery, etc etc.
It's actually more expensive to use the purely electric one by far. If my math is wrong feel free to call me on it.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
This thing looks to be a bitch to recharge. That's depressing. I'd need a garage and to specifically throw a higher output drop to it in order to have a reliably working car. While I'd love a non gas powered sporty car, this is just a very expensive lawn ornament.
Also, you aren't taking into account maintenance, oil changes, filters, &c. which an electric car doesn't have to worry about. Do insurance companies charge more for one of these or would it be a discount as well? Because there's a hell of a lot more eating away at your pocket book for owning a car than just the gas.
Stupid Conservation of Matter and Energy! Mark my words, one day I'll make human beings photosynthetic. Shit, I already am. I lose my mind in temperatures under 60.
I drive a 97 Accord. I'm determined to make my next car a modern energy saver, but it would be nice to see a particular system become a standard. Hybrid, Electric, Hydrogen, whatever. That's probably something our children or grandchildren will see. The photosynthesis....not so much. :x
Also, you aren't taking into account maintenance, oil changes, filters, &c. which an electric car doesn't have to worry about. Do insurance companies charge more for one of these or would it be a discount as well? Because there's a hell of a lot more eating away at your pocket book for owning a car than just the gas.
You're right. We can probably chock up those costs being comparable to the electrical cost of recharging the sucks. Sure as fucked be known that if I ran a vacuum for 4 hours straight, I'd be paying a shit ton more a month.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I'm glad to see the technology come this far. Now, if Obama is in the white house for eight years, I think we will see vast improvements in all aspects of the technology that make these cars possible given the massive funding companies who are making electric cars are about to receive.
So I'm really looking forward to 5 and 10 years from now.
Stupid Conservation of Matter and Energy! Mark my words, one day I'll make human beings photosynthetic. Shit, I already am. I lose my mind in temperatures under 60.
I drive a 97 Accord. I'm determined to make my next car a modern energy saver, but it would be nice to see a particular system become a standard. Hybrid, Electric, Hydrogen, whatever. That's probably something our children or grandchildren will see. The photosynthesis....not so much. :x
If you really want to save the environment, keep it running in good order and don't buy a new car. You've already got a fairly fuel-efficient one, just make sure it doesn't spew blue smoke and you're all good.
Unless you want another one for other reasons, in which case, go you. :P
PeregrineFalcon on
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firewaterwordSatchitanandaPais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered Userregular
edited March 2009
I used to follow Tesla Motors pretty closely last year - Musk is a smart dude, and I'm sure there are other smart dudes there, but I will be surprised if they ever get these (or the roadster) on the streets.
Did they ever manage to secure VC funding for manufacturing capital? Also, loosing the trade secrets case with Fisker is going to have a fairly bad impact on the company.
And even though I know it will never get built, the Fisker Karma is way sexier.
Also, you aren't taking into account maintenance, oil changes, filters, &c. which an electric car doesn't have to worry about. Do insurance companies charge more for one of these or would it be a discount as well? Because there's a hell of a lot more eating away at your pocket book for owning a car than just the gas.
I'm pretty sure they'll still need maintenance of some sort.
Also, you aren't taking into account maintenance, oil changes, filters, &c. which an electric car doesn't have to worry about. Do insurance companies charge more for one of these or would it be a discount as well? Because there's a hell of a lot more eating away at your pocket book for owning a car than just the gas.
I'm pretty sure they'll still need maintenance of some sort.
Yes, but it's a question of cost. If everything is cheaper on an electric car except the sticker and battery replacements that needs to be factored into the 'daily' cost of it. Particularly if you want to get a cost per gallon estimate that'd be necessary to achieve parity or become more thrifty. If, when you take all of this into account the price goes from his ~$5.25 to $4 something it becomes more realistic. We've already hit $4/gallon and when the economy recovers it won't be too difficult to top that again.
Stupid Conservation of Matter and Energy! Mark my words, one day I'll make human beings photosynthetic. Shit, I already am. I lose my mind in temperatures under 60.
I drive a 97 Accord. I'm determined to make my next car a modern energy saver, but it would be nice to see a particular system become a standard. Hybrid, Electric, Hydrogen, whatever. That's probably something our children or grandchildren will see. The photosynthesis....not so much. :x
If you really want to save the environment, keep it running in good order and don't buy a new car. You've already got a fairly fuel-efficient one, just make sure it doesn't spew blue smoke and you're all good.
Unless you want another one for other reasons, in which case, go you. :P
This. A '97 Accord is a modern energy-saver unless you've let it go to shit. The energy-cost of manufacturing it has more than been recouped, they get pretty damn good gas-mileage unless you're working the powerband like you think the drive to work is LeMans, and cars rotting in junk-yards cause greater environmental damage than a car of the same year that is still in good working order and still being driven.
Tesla is pretty irrelevent, and by their past offerings, a bit "too good to be true." Tesla has a great marketing team, who are fantastic at spin. For instance, the reason they use a single-speed transmission? Well, it's not actually single speed, it's direct-drive. The reason it's direct drive is because they can't get their 2-speed transmissions to stop grenading.
The idea of an actual practical electric car is a decent step forward, but as of yet none has ever seen the light of day. Not to mention that people forget the electricity they use to fill their electric cars has to come from somewhere. It costs less, per-mile, than gasoline, but the huuuuuge cost of the car upfront combined with costly battery changes (along with the servicing the rest of a very specialized car that you can't just take to a local mechanic) make it extremely impractical from a total cost of ownership standpoint. The real future is hydrogen.
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It's $40,000 just to get on the initial waiting list.
As cool as this thing is, please wake me up when someone finally prices a car like this in the 30k range without a tax credit. Until then I consider it a gimmick to drive company brand recognition and little else.
This is why I perfer hybrids to electrics - owning an electric basically requires that you also still own a gas car that you can use on longer trips. And it's not like you can say when buying a car that never in the next decade will you need to drive >300 miles.
It might work better in a place like Europe where there's trains everywhere, but in America long drives are a lot more commonplace.
And I'd rather be able to fly like superman, but physics get in the way.
vastly quicker recharge times are a very long way off. And Tesla isn't going to be the one to make that breakthrough.
Yeah, but now you have battery cycles to compete with - the more you deplete and recharge a battery, the less of a charge it's gonna hold. I think a 1000 cycles is the average these days, and during that count to a 1,000, it's going to progressively hold less and less of a charge.
How this works as a sustainable and palatable business model is beyond me. Eventually the novelty of owning a EV is going to wear off when you can't make it from point A to B.
This is why I see it as a car for families for the time being. It's easy enough to use the second car that you already have, for your vacation trips.
Heh. Wonder how many miles it gets on a charge of normal driving when it's too cold not to run the heat.
That'll be MIT. Now they just need to adapt their early successes
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How about that bluetooth recharging system? Maybe that could be taken into effect.
It would need to be scaled up considerably but we are now able to charge things over bluetooth and they're thinking of having mobile phones being able to link up to stations all over cities as you walk around them, just recharging themselves.
If you could have a car constantly recharging little by little as you drive about that would be useful. We have also been able to speed up recharge times a little on small objects with specialized battery packs, but I don't think we have the voltage capabilities to do it with something as big as a car yet.
Didn't they try and embed a electrical grid in the roads a while ago, and it could wirelessly recharge a EV? Or do I need to lay off the crack pipe?
Somehow I doubt this would ever work for anything bigger than a remote controlled toy.
Unless the application is that it charges your car while you're sitting at work or something?
I never finish anyth
I'd imagine an EV would be completely useless in that climate.
In Canada we already have power hookups in about many of our parking lots (least where I live right now) because it gets so cold in the winter you have to plug in your car if it's being parked for more then a few hours.
Price is important, and right now things might not look great but this recession will be ending sometime and when it does gas is going to start going up in price again. I'm confident electric cars will be cost competitive with gas guzzlers within my lifetime.
If it takes a night at home to recharge with the thing plugged in, you'd probably have to spend a week or two at the office to get anything out of it. It'd be infinitely more reasonable to suggest that office parking lots install outlets.
Cell phones don't need to move anything, it makes a big difference.
This is my point. My office already has outlets, I spend my bosses electricity on my car's block heater/battery all winter already. If cold doesn't rape this car in some way it seems ideal for northern places where people are already well used to plugging in their cars.
Probably, but it looks a lot less likely that they're going to be cost-competetive with efficient cars.
Cold weather + electric car = fucked.
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Math below:
Upfront: $50,000 vs $22,400 (starting prices)
Replacement battery pack: $5,000 vs $0
Other maintenance costs: Who knows? But given the relatively scarcity of mechanics familiar with Teslas, I expect it'd cost like crazy to take it in. I won't include that in the calculations.
$32,600 over ten years is $3,260 a year to make up, $8.93 a day.
Mileage/Cost:
Let's assume the Honda averages 25 mpg. At prices of $2 per gallon, that's 8 cents per mile. If gas prices went back up to $4 per gallon, it's 16 cents per mile.
For the Tesla, I can only do an extraordinarily rough estimate. Assuming a standard 220V, 30A outlet setup and given the four hour advertised charging time, that's 26.4 kWh for 300 miles, or .088 kWh per mile. At average Illinois prices, that comes out to about 1 cent per mile, or 100 miles per dollar.
So, at current gas prices you're saving 7 cents per mile by driving the Tesla. You'd have to drive an average of 127 miles a day to break even, and more to save money. At $4 a gallon, you're saving 15 cents a gallon and only have to average 59.5 miles a day (or a 40 mile commute each way every work day).
I'm not even aware of them selling it that way, so if they are it's not being pushed hard. The marketing of their first model was - it's fast as hell, and doesnt use gas.
I think the "doesn't use gas" bit makes people think "environmentally friendly", as people have come to freely associate it with not using fossil fuels so hi5.
It's fast as hell, but as something so difficult to get recharged and with the cost of replacement, I don't think it will be seen as a better alternative to petrol/diesel cars.
Hydrogen seems to be making better advances that way at the moment.
viable hydrogen cars are like 15 years out, minimum. They are just wayyyy too expensive right now to produce. EV's and electric heavy Hybrid's (the volt) are where it's going to be at for quite awhile.
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
I think they're taking more visible strides than electric cars when it comes to being a useful alternative to fossil fuels. Although, I do agree that it's going to be a good few years yet before they become anywhere near mainstream buys.
I don't think electric cars like the Tesla vehicles are going to be the future though.
Even though it would be prohibitively expensive, from just an engineering standpoint, dropping the power plant from one of these into a fairly standard sedan sized car, probably wouldn't be too hard. These motors tend to be pretty small. With as much torque as it puts out and the wide powerband, all you are really doing is dropping the engine in and then getting the power to the final drive(which would probably new), and then finding somewhere for the battery packs and computers. The weight distribution would end up a bit different, so the suspension might want some work. Once this stuff becomes affordable, conversions should be fairly practical.
This doesn't seem like a terribly light vehicle, and it's got fairly impressive numbers, conversions using similar gas powered models would likely be roughly comparable. Currently available batteries and motors make it more involved and less rewarding.
edit: MIT, I think, recently found a neat way of coating the terminals of a Li-ion battery so that they charge almost at almost super capacitor. None of the processes are particularly expensive either. It could realistically be a in production in less than a decade, if it works as well and simply as they've said. If it happens and we clean up the production process and get decent recycling in place, it could be better than hydrogen.
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BG C-100
Not nearly as sexy or awesome as the Tesla, though. Now if only I had 50 grand.
The cost of buying the battery, per day, is $3.43 (5000/4/365), assuming a 4 year time, and $5000 for the cheapest battery. At 165 miles, and an average 25 mile commute (24.3 according to the US census) a day you'd recharge once a week. Recharging a battery that size may be expensive, I'd need to know those numbers first.
The cost of filling up a 10 gallon tank at $2 a gallon is $20. Assuming an average 25 MPG car, that's 250 miles a fill up. That's almost two weeks a fillup. That's $80 a month, or $2.63 a day (this number is slightly higher when factoring in extra travel).
The gas prices would need to be close to $5.25ish a gallon to be close to the same costs. That's not factoring in some minor things like extra travel, longer commutes, recharge costs of the battery, etc etc.
It's actually more expensive to use the purely electric one by far. If my math is wrong feel free to call me on it.
Also, you aren't taking into account maintenance, oil changes, filters, &c. which an electric car doesn't have to worry about. Do insurance companies charge more for one of these or would it be a discount as well? Because there's a hell of a lot more eating away at your pocket book for owning a car than just the gas.
I drive a 97 Accord. I'm determined to make my next car a modern energy saver, but it would be nice to see a particular system become a standard. Hybrid, Electric, Hydrogen, whatever. That's probably something our children or grandchildren will see. The photosynthesis....not so much. :x
You're right. We can probably chock up those costs being comparable to the electrical cost of recharging the sucks. Sure as fucked be known that if I ran a vacuum for 4 hours straight, I'd be paying a shit ton more a month.
So I'm really looking forward to 5 and 10 years from now.
If you really want to save the environment, keep it running in good order and don't buy a new car. You've already got a fairly fuel-efficient one, just make sure it doesn't spew blue smoke and you're all good.
Unless you want another one for other reasons, in which case, go you. :P
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Did they ever manage to secure VC funding for manufacturing capital? Also, loosing the trade secrets case with Fisker is going to have a fairly bad impact on the company.
And even though I know it will never get built, the Fisker Karma is way sexier.
I'm pretty sure they'll still need maintenance of some sort.
Yes, but it's a question of cost. If everything is cheaper on an electric car except the sticker and battery replacements that needs to be factored into the 'daily' cost of it. Particularly if you want to get a cost per gallon estimate that'd be necessary to achieve parity or become more thrifty. If, when you take all of this into account the price goes from his ~$5.25 to $4 something it becomes more realistic. We've already hit $4/gallon and when the economy recovers it won't be too difficult to top that again.
This. A '97 Accord is a modern energy-saver unless you've let it go to shit. The energy-cost of manufacturing it has more than been recouped, they get pretty damn good gas-mileage unless you're working the powerband like you think the drive to work is LeMans, and cars rotting in junk-yards cause greater environmental damage than a car of the same year that is still in good working order and still being driven.
The idea of an actual practical electric car is a decent step forward, but as of yet none has ever seen the light of day. Not to mention that people forget the electricity they use to fill their electric cars has to come from somewhere. It costs less, per-mile, than gasoline, but the huuuuuge cost of the car upfront combined with costly battery changes (along with the servicing the rest of a very specialized car that you can't just take to a local mechanic) make it extremely impractical from a total cost of ownership standpoint. The real future is hydrogen.