Tesla Motors May Be Having an iPhone Moment 452
pacopico writes "Telsa Motors has started churning out 500 of its all electric Model S sedans per week. Bloomberg Businessweek just did a cover story about the company, suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California, and the company appears poised to raise its sales forecasts for the year. There's a lot of talk about Tesla's history and why it survived when Fisker and Better Place failed too."
Rich People's Fads (Score:5, Interesting)
For all the whining and moaning about rich people, that seems to be how society advances often. A rich person's fad then becomes a commodity.
Duurr (Score:3, Interesting)
California isn't the only place where rich people buy toys. I see plenty of bald law/finance people in Chicago with them. Porsche should be getting nervous.
Re:Testla is good... (Score:2, Interesting)
The best thing about Tesla so far (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:MSRP of $62,400 Though? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this article from 2012 [autoblog.com], the average purchase price of a new car was $30,748 and increasing.
Seeing as that's about half the MSRP, I suppose it's not totally out of reach.
Personally I have no idea why people spend this kind of money on a car. My last brand new car (I don't usually buy brand new, but they had a lot of incentives) was about $16k (cdn), and I considered that a lot. A car is not an investment.....
Re:Testla is good... (Score:4, Interesting)
These electric cars are just as poisonous to the environment as anything else but liberal idiots keep on keepin on.
Really depends on when your power comes from. I live in British Columbia, where the majority of our electricity comes from Hydroelectricity - So the electric cars here have a very, very low carbon footprint. Ditto jurisdictions where power comes from wind, solar and fission.
Re:Tesla Model S (Score:4, Interesting)
I am looking at an Audi also; I find the A6 perfectly droolworthy. I did drive a Telsa yesterday which is now easily my favorite car after only 20 minutes (my boss has one). He points out that if you get the high-end, there is a 8 year warranty on the car, and all he has done so far (7,000 miles in) is rotate the tires. Cost? $10.
They provided a garage charger and installed it at his house for free)
By the time you figure in 6 or 7 years of maintenance, gas, etc. on your Audi in Cali, you are not that far from what he paid upfront. Have the car charge automatically after midnight when the electric rates are low, and you begin to see the value. Over 8-10 years, buying a $60,000 car with gas prices shooting upwards, and replacing a zillion parts as they wear out, I will spend close to $87,000 on my car; my boss will only buy tires. It seems to boil down to whether you have the money upfront or not, the cars cost about the same.
Re:Testla is good... (Score:2, Interesting)
The truck presumably has to drive back those 100 miles as well, so the transport loss would be 0.28% not 0.14%
I'm amazed that those fuel trucks, fully loaded, can actually get 7 mpg
Re:Testla is good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's make up an example. Let's say you have a source of fuel, a power plant that can burn that fuel, a testing ground that's 100 miles further away from the fuel source than the power plant, and two vehicles that can utilize the fuel. Internal combustion cars are generally about 15% efficient. Electric engine cars are 85-90% efficient. Fossil fuel power plants are about 33% efficient. Your transmission numbers are 99.86% for gasoline and 99.25% for electricity over 100 miles.
So overall efficiencies are:
Gas: 1 * 0.9986 * 0.15 = 0.14979
Electrical = 1 * 0.33 * 0.9925 * 0.88 =
So over a distance of 100 miles Electric cars are still almost twice as efficient, even with the extra losses in transmission. (Admittedly this is for "normal" internal combustion cars, i don't have the figures to hand for the average efficiency of hybrid cars.)
Doing a little quick math (it's been forever since i've had to solve for a variable, so i'm just plugging it into a spreadsheet) it looks like the break-even point is about 10,700 miles. So if the distance from the fuel source was over 10,700 miles, you'd be better shipping the fuel to the car rather than converting it to electricity on-site and transmitting it to the destination. Though obviously over such an extreme distance a lot of other factors would come into play and overwhelm the simple equation.
Sources:
http://consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/consumer_tips/vehicle_energy_losses.html [consumerenergycenter.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station [wikipedia.org]
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1273932 [eetimes.com]
There may be more accurate numbers out there, so the exact outcome might differ, it's clear that better efficiency in just a single stage of the operation does not dictate an overall higher efficiency.
Re:Testla is good... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, you're only half right. Tesla wanted to pump electricity into the ground, not the air.
Tesla thought electricity was a transverse wave (think: sound wave) not a sinusoidal wave (think: light). It's why his project didn't work.
Not to be too unfair, at the time it was hotly debated which kind of wave it was and nobody really knew for sure.