Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars 520
jamie found the news that Tesla Motors is delivering roadsters in California. (We've been following developments on the Tesla front for a couple of years now.) According to a letter from the CEO, "9 production Roadsters have arrived in California, another 3 arrive this weekend, and they will keep arriving at the rate of 4 per week... In fact, currently there are 27 Roadsters in various stages of assembly." The early owners must be proud, but there could be complications.
Title (Score:3, Informative)
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:5, Informative)
Gearboxes are really for converting torque to rotation. IC engines have limited rpm ranges and "optimal" torque and power rpm bands. The gearbox is there to allow effficient use of these zones.
Electric motors have a very flat torque curve all along the rpm range (torque starts right after 0 rpm). Also Electric engines usually have a much wider rpm range and their efficiency in converting energy to mechanical energy is much more constant tha for IC engines where the efficiency drops very quickly when you approach max rpm. Hence a gearbox is only so useful for an electric car.
Mind you as well that electric motors have bags ans bags more of torque than IC engines and as such a reduction gear is not really necessary to get teh car in motion (as with a 1st gear in a regular car). This high torque is also a challenge for designers as traiditional design gearboxes flop with electric engines.
Hope that helps you understand why there are only 2 gears on this car.
Why not sooner? (Score:4, Informative)
It looks like the thing that has largely fixed the EV issue is the laptop computer/mobile phone - which has justified the research effort into lithium batteries.
From a volume point of view in the short term the manufacturer to watch is Mitsubishi: they have a joint venture factory with Yuasa, and last week they delivered a test sample EV to a Japanese police force (they already have them with Tokyo utilities.) The Miev may not be as large and fast as the Tesla, but it is likely actually to be affordable. $100000 will only appeal to the rich who want a status symbol, as the payback compared to (say) a Mercedes Bluemotion clean Diesel will be forever. But a $30000 commuter vehicle may well make economic sense. I could justify one right now if oil reaches $200/barrel.
In fact, there are reports that sales of the EVs currently available are very poor, presumably because people who might have bought one as a third car are spending the money on new, efficient vehicles which will show a real cost saving in a sensible payback period.
Re:Title (Score:3, Informative)
You don't talk about "them", especially now that they've got a weapon that can penetrate the trusty tinfoil hat.
Re:Complications only if you can't plan ahead (Score:3, Informative)
Batteries don't suddenly run out of energy, like you can with gasoline tank. That doesn't make petrocarbons useless or anything, but there is a fundamental difference in the convenience and availability of the energy storage.
*wink*
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:4, Informative)
Actually I was wondering why it doesn't have just the one ratio. I assume the reason was to get a nice high maximum speed, ie, the top gear is an overdrive.
Yep. And they've decided to scrap it in favour of a single speed, slightly higher ratio gearbox on newer models, also. I think they'll start delivering those in about 6 months or so, from what I read on their blog.
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:4, Informative)
(torque starts right after 0 rpm)
Close, but the torque starts right at 0 rpm. Actually for most electric motors, the torque peaks at 0 rpm. Thats why there's no need to "idle" the electric motor when the vehicle is stopped, and also why there is no "torque convertor" as in automatic transmission equipped IC engines.
Besides, if there was no torque at 0 rpm, then it would never begin to move...
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:5, Informative)
Close, but not quite [machinedesign.com]. I don't exactly remember why the curve looks like that, something do to with inductive reactance.
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:3, Informative)
Was that a very poor attempt at joke, or do you just know nothing about cars and metals?
Assuming the same diameter of wheels, they would be be spinning just as fast at 200mph in an electric car as they would be in a combusion engined car. I would also expect that the axels would melt from friction before the metal 'disintegrated'. Metal doesn't even 'disintegrate' unless you count rusting. It's usually quite malleable and would simply deform if large stresses are places upon it.
Re:Awesome (Score:2, Informative)
For a sports car, and even more a lightweight carbon fibre one with a completely new drivetrain philosophy, YES it's astoundingly cheap.
No, I can't afford one either. Stop whining.
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:4, Informative)
Those are AC motors.
Here's some info on DC motors. (Note the curves are theoretical, and simplified).
http://lancet.mit.edu/motors/motors3.html [mit.edu]
Torque is max at 0 RPM.
Re:Now only if... (Score:1, Informative)
That's the beauty of the whole conspiracy. Big Oil are hiding behind shell companies and using false names and own the whole patent system anyway, so you'll never find the patents no matter how hard you look, nor any evidence to prove it either way. But we all know it's true.
Re:toys for billionaires (Score:2, Informative)
"Gearboxes are really for converting torque to rotation"
Just to be annoying, torque IS rotation, specifically the application of force around an axis...
Gearboxes are actually torque multipliers.
I'm sure you know what you mean, and from the rest of your post looks like you've got a decent handle on it all, but there's already too much misunderstanding of torque vs power in the world. Actually there's a generally disturbingly poor mechanical knowledge on the net...best to keep it clean and not make it any worse.
Re:Carbon fiber (Score:3, Informative)
Didn't Boeing say they won't be testing carbon fiber wings to the point of failure because they'd need to call in the hazmat team?
The stuff I saw about boeing's CF wings suggests that the reason they didn't test them to failure was probably because the failure point would be so far outside normal operating parameters for such wings that it wasn't worth it. The standard health and safety requirements for cutting and breaking CF composites are that it should only be done in a well-ventilated area. I wouldn't worry unless you crash it indoors.
Re:Carbon fiber (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Leave the poor patent system alone!!! (Score:3, Informative)
But if you wanted to actually build such a device, you'd still have to license the patent that your patent improved on.
Re:Now only if... (Score:2, Informative)
Who killed the electric car?
Re:Now only if... (Score:5, Informative)
Prove it. Find 5 patents that are owned by "Big Oil". Also, define "Big Oil".
Okay, Big Oil should be pretty easy. From this wikipedia page [wikipedia.org], you'll get ExxonMobile, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Total S.A. And they don't register these patents under their own names- they use subsidiaries. For example, Chevron owns Cobasys, a NiMH battery maker.
5 Patents? Hell, I can find you at least 40. [uspto.gov]
Do I get a cookie?
Re:Carbon fiber (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Now only if... (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, Cobasys and ECD Ovonics hold 125 patents for battery technology, particularly NiMH battery technology. They produced the batteries that powered the ill fated EV1. In 2001, Texaco (now Chevron) bought Cobasys. Since then, they have refused to sell automotive batteries or license the technology to smaller players. Since the big players were not interested in electric cars (perhaps because of influence from Big Oil), this effectively killed electric cars.
They have also actively used their patents to prevent others from selling NiMH batteries for automotive purposes in the US. In 2001, same year as they were bought by Texaco, they sued Panasonic EV Energy for patent infringement. The results were that Panasonic is restricted from selling commercial quantities of some batteries in the North American market until 2010.
Re:Now only if... (Score:2, Informative)
From wikipedia, on the toyota EV (based on the rav4) that was scrapped somewhere in 2003. Would need to validate the sources.
Whether or not Toyota wanted to continue production, it was unlikely to be able to do so, because the EV-95 battery was no longer available. Chevron had inherited control of the worldwide patent rights for the NiMH EV-95 battery when it merged with Texaco, which had purchased them from General Motors. Chevron's unit won a $30,000,000 settlement from Toyota and Panasonic, and the production line for the large NiMH batteries was closed down and dismantled. Only smaller NiMH batteries, incapable of powering an electric vehicle or plugging in, are currently allowed by Chevron-Texaco.
Re:my grasp does not reach tesla (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Greenies don't like nuclear (Score:3, Informative)
It doesn't help that our country insists on rebuilding the same old, flawed design for nuclear power plants, rather than any one of a dozen or so better designs that are out there which are far safer.
From your listed homepage link, I think I can safely assume that "our country" refers to the US. The US hasn't built any commercial nuclear reactors in decades. These better designs almost universally post-date this total halt on construction.
The EV-smokestack myth (Score:3, Informative)
Debunked. [evdl.org]
Re:Now only if... (Score:5, Informative)
cant name 5 patents but I CAN name one very important one. Try making and selling Nickel Metal Hydride batteries suitable for electric cars and see how far you get.
You mean like the large-format NiMHs in the Vectrix scooters?
You will likely be sued by a company you haven't heard of called Cobasys for violation of their patent on NiMH battery tech.
Cobasys has repeatedly made it clear that they will deal in large orders for large format NiMH, but not small orders. There haven't exactly been people lining up around the block wanting large orders of large-format NiMHs, however. It's old tech, inferior in about a dozen different ways to the modern automotive li-ions.
FYI, Cobasys only holds the patent rights on said large format NiMHs in the US, not internationally. Oh, and they've cross-licensed their patent portfolios with PEVE (who they initially sued for making NiMHs for sale in the US without paying them); PEVE now has the right to make large format NiMHs for sale in the US. The fact that they haven't should speak volumes for the demand of said batteries.
NiMH was top of the line tech back during the original CARB ZEV mandate. It no longer is.
Re:Now only if... (Score:2, Informative)
Early Lithium Ion sucks too (Score:3, Informative)
The most used Lithium Ion chemistry uses LiCoO2 cathodes. Disadvantages:
- Price (Cobalt is relatively rare and expensive). Acceptable for a notebook, not so good for a car that needs 500 times the capacity.
- Aging (will lose capacity even if unused, so you might have to buy new batteries halfway through the life of your car).
- can blow up when overheating or due to faults in manufacturing, see Sony laptop batteries...
Now there are some very interesting new developments in Lithium Ion technology, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion#Improvements_to_Lithium_Ion_Battery_Technology [wikipedia.org]
I guess one or more of those will end up making large Lithium Ion batteries a lot more attractive than NiMH. Right now some companies use these for battery tools and scooters (Segway), but the big breakthrough is yet to come.
Re:Complications only if you can't plan ahead (Score:4, Informative)