Elon Musk Pledges To End "Range Anxiety" For Tesla Model S 286
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk has used his Twitter account to announce a press conference on Thursday which he claims will end "range anxiety" for Tesla's Model S sedan. Whatever change they're making will be implemented through an over-the-air software update to the cars, affecting the entire fleet. Range anxiety is the term for a fear that your vehicle won't have enough fuel/charge to reach its destination. It's a common reason for people to avoid buying electric cars, given the much smaller infrastructure build-out compared to gas stations. If Tesla is improving the Model S's range through a software update, then it likely involves optimizations to the battery and to the ways in which power is used. Tesla has also talked about developing a feature called "torque sleep," which puts one of the drive units to sleep while not needed. They say it can wake up and begin delivering torque again "so fast that the driver can't perceive it."
Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:5, Insightful)
.. range. For example, more charging stations and/or a better locator (perhaps with a partnership with a nationwide chain of stores or two), better range calculation, a service to have charging trucks come out to you to you should you run out of charge (maybe even heading to the point where you would run out of charge before it even happens so that there's no wait), or all sorts of other possibilities. There's no guarantee that it actually means more range.
Of course, it could mean that.
Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it could mean that.
No - your suggestions are all better. Unless they're going to download new laws of physics to the cars, the sort of incremental range improvement that a software update might bring is hardly going to end "range anxiety". Range anxiety isn't so much about the absolute range - its about the scarcity of recharging stations c.f. petrol, the time taken to recharge, the uncertainty of the quoted range and the need to be towed to a recharge station if you do run out.
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Well, the uncertainty of the quoted range is something that could be improved with a software update.
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Since it's OTA, it can't be a new battery. And anyway, they said a few months ago that no significant hardware upgrades (batteries,...) were forthcoming in the near future. And if it's a software upgrade extending range through better battery management, it could never make such a drastic difference that it would "end range anxiety".
Torque sleep only makes sense for dual engine models, definitely not "the entire fleet". Could be part of the announcement (torque sleep is overdue), but there has to be more. S
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They have been testing a single swapping station with a limited number of cars. Maybe they are now planning to build more
How will an OTA software update build more battery swapping stations?
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Maybe the stations are already active but not advertised, and the OTA is for a database of them?
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Torque sleep only makes sense for dual engine models, definitely not "the entire fleet". Could be part of the announcement (torque sleep is overdue), but there has to be more. Something that also applies to the single engine models.
Torque "sleep" may refer to a new motor control algorithm. It would work just fine on the single motor cars. Basically apply torque until speed reaches the setpoint, then turn the motor off. Only "wake up" and apply torque when the speed drops below the setpoint. If you do it quickly enough it is unnoticeable. It increases efficiency because it automatically takes advantage of tailwinds and downslopes. The same thing could be done with an i.c.e. car as well, without as much benefit, by stopping fuel flow an
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a service to have charging trucks come out to you to you should you run out of charge (maybe even heading to the point where you would run out of charge before it even happens so that there's no wait)
Hmm... I wonder if there is money to be made with some sort of "in air refueling" type scheme. huge truck consisting mainly of batteries or charged super caps pulls up behind a Model S, extends a rigid charging plug (appropriately penis shaped), and inserts it into a port mounted in the center of the rear trunk. Rapid charge exchange, credit account is debited, and the truck pulls away to go to the next customer. All performed at highway speeds...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Clarify the difference, please?
You know Germans LOVE David Hasselhoff.
Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:5, Funny)
Knight Rider : the car automatically drives up a ramp into the back of the truck where an attractive brunette personally sees to your charging needs while the truck continues toward your destination.
Gay Porno : The attractive brunette is David Hasselhoff.
Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the tipping point for electric vehicle range would be 1000 miles on one charge. Yes that is 2 to 4 times as much as most cars, however, the charging time for an electric car is much longer than gasoline, So in order for you to have a car good for all purposes ( Not an electric car for your commute, and a gas car for long trips ) 1000 range, means you can drive for 16 hours then take 8 hours (when you are sleeping ) to charge up.
I think this 1000 mile per charge should be a goal for Electric auto makers. That or they need to need to match the charge time to a refueling time, and have at least 250 miles per charge.
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I think you'd find the vast majority of people have never driven 16 hours without stopping. Normal humans need to eat, drink and poop... not to mention stretch.
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The thing is with a petrol/diesel/lpg/etc powered car you can drive until the tank is nearly empty. Then at a conviniant location along the route stop, fill the fuel tank, go to the toilet, stretch grab a snack etc and be back on the road quickly. Especially if you have more than one person in the car and so can share the burden of driving this allows travelling for long periods with minimal stopped time.
With an electric car so far you can't do that. You have to go out of your way to find a charging station
Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:5, Interesting)
For you it might be 1000 miles, for most people Tesla have already more than exceeded their requirement. On the rare occasions when they do want to drive more than the Tesla allows on a single charge they will probably want to stop for a 45 minute break anyway, during which they can recharge.
I'm a Leaf owner. I never have range issues, I never worry about it, and charging saves me time compared to pumping liquid fuel because the only time I ever go out of my way to do it I combine the rapid charging with a bathroom/coffee break. For most people most of the time even a Leaf is fine, it's just that they worry about those rare long journeys and seem to forget that they own another petrol car anyway.
Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the general notion that max range on an electric needs to be further than you'll ever drive in a day.
But 1000 miles is a bit beyond even my idea of acceptable range. If an electric could get 600-700 miles on a charge, I'd be happy.
Or alternately, if I can fully recharge an electric in ten minutes, that would also work. You might even be able to sweet talk me into a thirty minute recharge if the range were such as to allow for ONE recharge requirement per day of driving (which means a range of 500 miles or thereabouts).
In neither case would the "but...but...people have to stop for lunch/bathroom/etc" matter. When I'm driving to visit family, I'm not going to stretch a 10-hour drive into a 15-hour drive by taking long breaks on the road....
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I am betting that the feature will manage speed based on destination and charging. Many people either over or under estimate how speed affects range. By integrating speed/range calculations into driving, a Tesla should be able to manage max speed for the driver without the driver having to constantly guess.
For bonus point the software update would be able to incorporate other range affecting factors into the calculations such as traffic, speedlimits, elevation changes, weather and driver habits.
Re:No, it couldn't. Read the post. (Score:5, Insightful)
That says nothing about extending range. It talks about ending range anxiety. Which could be, for isntance, adjusting the sat nav so it calculates how much further you can drive before you go out of range of the nearest charging station.
Re:No, it couldn't. Read the post. (Score:4, Funny)
Or simply using the saved energy from the software update to zap any range-anxious driver.
Re:No, it couldn't. Read the post. (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps Tesla will now offer discounted scrips for Xanax, to help combat that range anxiety.
Sure, you might still get stranded, but at least you won't be overly stressed about it.
Re:No, it couldn't. Read the post. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but Elon Musk doesn't make big claims like this, and intentionally generate hype, without having something genuinely interesting up his sleeve.
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True. If Elon Musk is a moron who wants to flush any credibility he has with his existing customers hyping that as if it were a revolutionary improvement.
Which I have to say is par for the course in the US automotive industry. I guess we'll find out whether Musk has lost his grip when the actual announcement comes out.
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My $35k Nissan Leaf already does that. I have to assume that the Model S had that feature from the beginning.
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Many towns and cities in the UK don't have off road parking, and onroad parking is not allocated so there is no guarantee that you can park within 50 metres of your home. Add in the fact that theres a pavement between the road and your house, and electric vehicles are out for more than 50% of the UK driving population.
Predictive behavior and minor User Input (Score:3, Insightful)
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A simple voice request from the car speech synthesizer, asking for a city, a street, or something not very specific which can be used for broad calculations, and then let the user know: "You might have not enough battery to go/come back home"/"You can make a round trip 8 times to that destination"/"You might run out of juice but there's a supercharger nearby, would you like me to reserve a spot for you at hh:mm AM/PM?"
I love that I live in a day that this is perceived as "simple"!
Re:Predictive behavior and minor User Input (Score:5, Interesting)
Calculating range is a lot trickier than you might think, as so many factors come into play. I once started a company that worked on such range calculation software, we had to use very detailed vehicle models, use weather forecasts, historical weather data (to estimate road conditions - for example, snow, ice, water etc on the road), reasonably high resolution altitude models, real-time traffic data, traffic estimation, accessory power consumption (including factoring in weather data for climate control systems), driver behavior modelling, etc, and of course the fact that there's not straight roads going out to any given point in any given direction. And everything plays off everything else. The ambient temperature might affect your battery pack temperature which might affect its voltage which might affect the efficiency of the drive system and so forth. We discovered a lot of unexpected behavior, like how in order to get accurate wind resistance calculations we had to estimate realistic wind gusting patterns because the average wind speed (and direction) doesn't give the same results as a wind varied around an average. And there were a lot of things that we just didn't have and couldn't get data on, such as components of the car that weren't performing at the level that they should when new (though we had some ideas on how to estimate that), decisions that the driver might make later (such as to turn on/off accessories, change their driving speed, make unexpected stops, etc), and so forth.
The standard approach of just drawing a circle around a person might work sometimes but be way, way off at other times. The actual range of an electric vehicle is a sort of pointy polygon warped along terrain contour lines and extending out the furthest on straight moderate-speed country roads with few stop signs / lights.
Interestingly enough, while we had varying levels of interest from most major manufacturers, there was one manufacturer who made it clear right out that they do all of their software stack devel on such aspects in-house and have no interest in working with an outside entity. That manufacturer was Tesla.
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Maybe the problem can be turned around. Tell the vehicle were you want to go, and it'll tell you if that's possible, and what needs to be optimized to achieve that.
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Maybe the problem can be turned around. Tell the vehicle were you want to go, and it'll tell you if that's possible, and what needs to be optimized to achieve that.
But that's the problem, I want to tell the car where to go, not the other way around. At the point where I'm asking the car where I can go, it had bloody well better be able to drive me there.
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"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that."
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Re:Predictive behavior and minor User Input (Score:5, Interesting)
I got burned out and was out of money. We had a pilot project with GM, they really liked the software, but I just couldn't keep going. :(
It's by the way part of the reason I really hate the patent system, it games everything against small players. Not that patents were ever used against me - but because I had to *get* patents, everyone wants to know what's in your patent portfolio before they even consider investment or contracting with you. I had to spend a whole programmer's salary of my own money paying for patent attorneys just to get a most minimal amount of coverage. Which meant that all of the programming work fell on me. And everything about the auto industry is such a colossal money pit... hiring marketing people to get you in the door, having these ridiculously expensive dinners with execs, and on and on. I lost so much money on that thing.
This was in the days before kickstarter and the like took off, it might have been easier to raise enough money to stand a chance these days. But I just couldn't keep doing it. I was overworked and broke and totally out of my comfort zone managing a company. I never should have listened after all the people who beta'ed what I planned to be a free tool told me "oh my god you have to commercialize this!" :
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You should have listened to Don Lancaster.
Maybe it's going to be (Score:2)
Better spin up the FTL drive, just in case (Score:5, Funny)
an over-the-air software update [...] affecting the entire fleet
Yeah. That worked really well for the twelve colonies in Battlestar Galactica.
Hype? (Score:2)
Sounds like all hype to me.
They mentioned that it's for the entire Model S fleet, most of which does not have dual motors so "torque sleep" may not be the answer. My hope is they eek out an extra 50 miles to a full charge and recommend 100% charging all the time (they currently recommend 90% charge most of the time and only to use 100% for long trips).
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Whining about Jeremy Clarkson "ruining" the reputation of electric cars is like whining that Jerry Seinfeld ruined the reputation of airline food.
They're fucking comedians, dude. The only people taking Clarkson's jokes seriously are people with no sense of humor.
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Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC's top gear has done everything in his power, for example, to cast a very negative light on even the most powerful hybrid and electric vehicles.
Really? Did you see the BMW i8 Hybrid piece a few weeks ago? The one where he chooses the hybrid over the traditionally engined car at the end of the segment? The one where he likes the car for what it is?
Stop with the bullshit that Clarkson hates hybrids or electric cars - he hates shit cars, so shit cars get hated on by him and the Top Gear team.
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It isn't like I can just pull up at a stranger's house and run an electric cord over.
And the gasoline equivalent would be to walk up and ask for a little can of gas. Which is easily carried by a single person and can get you another 50 miles no problem.
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Have you ever, in your entire life, run out of gas? If so, why?
Range Anxiety Anxiety (Score:5, Funny)
First of all, "Range Anxiety" is a registered trademark of General Motors. I hope Elon doesn't get in trouble for using it without GM's permission!
Most people who actually own electric cars experience very little range anxiety. Far more common is "range anxiety anxiety": the fear that if you got an electric car, you might experience range anxiety.
Also prevalent among car makers is "range anxiety anxiety anxiety": the fear that, if you made an electric car, range anxiety anxiety might prevent people from buying it.
Remember folks, we have nothing to fear but. . . fear itself!
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First of all, "Range Anxiety" is a registered trademark of General Motors. I hope Elon doesn't get in trouble for using it without GM's permission!
Most people who actually own electric cars experience very little range anxiety. Far more common is "range anxiety anxiety": the fear that if you got an electric car, you might experience range anxiety.
Also prevalent among car makers is "range anxiety anxiety anxiety": the fear that, if you made an electric car, range anxiety anxiety might prevent people from buying it.
Remember folks, we have nothing to fear but. . . fear itself!
Some people want to dismiss range anxiety as being some phantom issue. In the future it may be, but it is a real issue today.
Most people who own electric cars have it as a second vehicle. They take an ICE car (own, rented, etc.) when they plan on going on a long trip, driving in bad weather (i.e. snow storm), etc.. Range anxiety is a real thing if it is your only vehicle.
It's bad enough sitting on a highway in a snow storm with traffic backed up for miles because of an accident and seeing that you have a
Re:Range Anxiety Anxiety (Score:4, Interesting)
Already the original batch of engineers who worked with Elon have branched off pursuing other electric vehicles. Almost all the package delivery trucks (UPS, USPS, FedEX) can go electric. 90% of the school bus fleet can go electric. Garbage trucks that make lots of stops and starts will benefit greatly by going electric. Panel trucks used by mechanics, plumbers etc can also become electric. Elon is not pursuing them. But there is an active Elon alumnus working on these projects. With quick swap batteries, taxi fleet can become electric.
It is merely a question of financing. Interest rates are at historic lows. That is what is now fueling the solar panel installations and wind energy projects now.
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It does not consume any power other than keeping the computer alive and the airconditioner/heater.
And the heater is a problem when idling in traffic in the snow. If you run the battery down maintaining a comfortable temperature, it's not like AAA can bring you a little can of electricity to make it to the next charging station where you can fill up and be on your way in a few minutes.
Not only are gas stations more prevalent, but there are also a huge number of other options available if you run a gas powered car out of gas ranging from a passerby letting you siphon some out of their tank to someone dri
Ending range anxiety can be done many ways. (Score:2)
But there are other ways
Torque sleep? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't "torque sleep" a manoeuvre for stealing the covers?
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I'm a reverse blanket bandit. If I don't make sure my GF is well insulated, she'll make me turn [up the heat | down the AC], and I will die of hypothermia before I lose that battle.
Now if he could only do this for Penises (Score:2)
"Elon Musk ends range anxiety for penises - Film at 11."
The OTA update is the clue (Score:2)
Mobile Battery Swap Station (Score:2)
Software update is software to call it to you when it calculates that you will not be able to make it to your destination.
I mean, as long as we're all speculating I may as well throw in my prognostication.
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Software update is software to call it to you when it calculates that you will not be able to make it to your destination.
And here my first thought was similar but different. Not only will the car complain about how far it can go, it will start complaining if you drive out of battery range of a charging station, letting you know in advance how long the 115V extension cord charge will take to get you back into range of a charging station.
Oh wait, that only puts certainty into the "how far can I go" calculus, it doesn't really do away with range anxiety, at least if it doesn't prompt you to take the other car out of the motor p
Range Anxiety is Real (Score:2)
In a pure EV, Range Anxiety is a huge problem because obviously if you run out of power it will leave you stranded. Even if you could find an outlet to plug it into, it will take a significant amount of time to recharge especially if it is a low wattage 120v outlet. This could happen due to neglecting to charge up, incorrectly estimating range which is easy to do considering it varies depending on weather / driving conditions or in emergency situations. It's a problem because this means you need to plan
Musk must be loving this (Score:2)
And he's got me. I'd love to get a used, dual-motor Model 3 in 2020. Seriously.
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The Ultimate Cure (Score:2)
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Re:The answer has been known for over 10000 years. (Score:5, Funny)
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What an amazing technology...they run on 100% renewable resources, and their waste products are biodegradable.
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When that Model-T was released as the affordable automobile, it was considered an environmental improvement... And it was.
So pick one. Global Warming, or Plague?
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you can always eat your ride if it breaks down
And I thought they smelled bad on the outside...
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It's called a horse.
See there's a not often remembered problem with horses and population density.
Shit. Yes, that's the problem, not just me being rude.
Exactly. It's also the reason some US east coast cities, such as New York, have high stoops on their homes; it elevate 2015-03-16eh entrance above the piles of horse manure on the street. Cars were seen as a non-polluting alternative to horses and an answer to grid lock; as well as safer since getting run over by a horse was a not uncommon occurrence.
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Cars were seen as a non-polluting alternative to horses and an answer to grid lock; as well as safer since getting run over by a horse was a not uncommon occurrence.
This. People dont realize how much pollution/problems/rangers exist with horses because 99.999% of people never use them. It's just like people and diseases vaccinations have nearly wiped out.
Further with all the care horses require, modern feed, medical care, large open spaces, they actually do have a carbon cost. Due to the insane footprint of creating, transporting, and preparing food the human CO2 footprint is pretty large - so big that jogging/running is approximately the same CO2 output as drivi
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Yes, but there are a relative few number of fossil-fuel-burning power plants compared to fossil-fuel-burning automobiles, and once the electric car is built, it can be charged from electricity produced from any power plant, not simply a fossil-fuel plant. That means that the fossil-fuel plants can be replaced over time as they reach end-of-life or when they no longer meet emissions standards.
New power plants take decades to plan, build and come online. Minimum 10 years in the USA. Very small solar and wind can go faster but make little impact since they are little. I live in a region where electrics get 35mpg and there are no plans on upgrades of any significance. If you buy a car now in a region like that, and don't move, you just paid double to pollute the same over the entire life of the vehicle.
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But that doesn't mean that electric cars pollute more, it means that the U.S.A. has crappy means of generating electricity.
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But that doesn't mean that electric cars pollute more, it means that the U.S.A. has crappy means of generating electricity.
Hiding or disbelieving in entropy/tailpipe location is irrelevant. Electrics pollute quite a bit and the enviornment responds to reality not fanboy pipe dreams. You could run solar powered biofuel in a diesel it dosent mean people who run regular diesel get that benefit.
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Oh, they didn't miss the point. The problem with the current EV's are multitudious just like the previous "solutions". (I'm off to gore some sacred cows now...)
The battery manufacture, recycling and/or disposal is a more toxic form of pollution than the previous "solutions".
The source of power, at least until we ditch the idiot notions about Thorium fueled nuclear power, is one of being more polluting (even the unreliable (yes) "green" power "solutions" pollute worse than Coal does...just not where you are. As such, any EV is as removed from "green" as Coal and the "green" wind and solar are. Coal's big reason for existence is that it's cleaner than the current alternatives (yes) and is reliable as opposed to the so-called "green" solutions in play right now.
Ultimately, they're not an improvement- it's a sloppily done shifting of the problem around. Could they be an improvement? Yes. With something like the recent ultracapacitor tech improvements, if it succeeds in being commercializeable, would remove the batteries from the equation. If you move to Thorium for most of your electric power with hydroelectric being the remainder, you end up with something relatively green as a power source for everything.
At that moment, and not before, do you have an improvement over the modern IC engines which actually emit less than the coal fired plants, the manufacture of the "green" solutions for electric power require to accomplish a move to all EV for personal transport.
Should we do better than we're doing? Yes. Is an EV in the current state of affairs "better"? Nope. Not even close.
Yes electrics pollute CO2 per mile the same as efficient gas and diesel for about 80% of the worlds populations. But lithium batteries are relatively non-toxic compared to lead acids, nickel metal hydrides and nickel cadniums. Ultra-capacitors have good power density, more than lithium in some cases, but energy density is 1.2-2 orders of magnitude lower making them useless as a power source. Pseudo capacitors may have some potential, but look like they will fall short of newer battery tech by a large gap
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Due to the insane footprint of creating, transporting, and preparing food the human CO2 footprint is pretty large - so big that jogging/running is approximately the same CO2 output as driving a hybrid.
That's true, but also disengenuous. The thing is as anyone who has spent time checking energy burned, running uses destressingly few additional calories. The key there is additional: you need 2000 calories per day just to keep your metabolic processes operating. So while the rate of energy consumption running
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jogging/running is approximately the same CO2 output as driving a hybrid
I don't think you're factoring in the reduced medical care that people who exercise require. This results in a decreased demand for healthcare goods and services, lower resource consumption and specifically consumption of the fossil fuels used to create the plastics most medical devices are made from nowadays due to their throwaway nature, and the energy consumed by the medical staff going to/from work, home visits, etc. Also, as far as consuming calories for exercising, the way most people obtain them is through eating carbs, not meat. Take a look at the horses you are referring to - they eat grain.
Holy cow lol! I mentioned jogging/running. Have you seen the injury rate? You ruin your knees and lower extremities so badly it's only two notches down from American football, boxing, or rugby players. Yes for a few years medical costs 'may' be lower. In the long run those people will ruin their bodies actually requiring more care. I myself messed up my knees and can't run or jog as eh short distances myself. I can still use elliptical trainers or bicycles, but it has pushed me to stop exercising ne
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Before the invention of the horseless carriage London was suffering greatly from a horse-shit re-distribution issue,
This is the typically-given reason for all department stores being designed with the perfume counter in front of the door. Supposedly it helped cover up the stench of all the "horse pollution" coming from the street.
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More likely lack of easily available hot water. People did not wash themselves or clothes very often before the advent of in home hot water. Unwashed people smell bad.
The past was putrid.
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It's not a very good answer, though. The internal combustion engine is very wasteful, throwing out 3/4 of the energy in the fuel as heat.
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It's not a very good answer, though. The internal combustion engine is very wasteful, throwing out 3/4 of the energy in the fuel as heat.
Another Thermodynamic neophyte... It is the rate of heat FLOW from the hot to the cold that gets you power our of a system, so you need to dump a lot of heat.
Actually, internal combustion engines are fairly efficient devices compared to the ideal heat engine considering how much power they produce. Yes, they do dump a LOT of heat, but despite what most people would have you believe, this dumping of heat is necessary to get WORK out of the fuel. Are they ideal? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But
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Another Thermodynamic neophyte... It is the rate of heat FLOW from the hot to the cold that gets you power our of a system, so you need to dump a lot of heat.
Yeah, I know how they work. Electric motors don't have this problem. That's why they are superior.
But given how they are used, with wildly varying power outputs, RPMs and operating conditions, they are amazingly good.
Electric motors are much better. Very efficient. No problem with varying power. Maximum torque at low speed. Smaller and lighter.
Re:The answer has been known for over 100 years. (Score:5, Informative)
Base load coal plants, even including all the losses, are still more efficient than burning gasoline in a car. And obviously, electricity has many sources, so with very little impact to the overall energy infrastructure, you can replace a coal plant by nuclear or wind.
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Which is still twice as efficient as a gas powered car.
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I don't think that article is accurate. It does not take into account the well to wheel efficiency. Hell, I can drive 30 miles using the energy required just to refine a gallon of gasoline.
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Oh the horror.. You need to stop slaughtering the sacred cow of the environmentalists.
Let them spend more money on their electric cars and believe they are helping the environment if they insist. Stop confusing them with actual logic and facts because this is about assuaging their guilt about being rich consumers, and not about the environment. You are poking the sacred cow when you bring up CO2 emissions. They won't like that.
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Two points: 1. No. It isn't - When you take everything into account, including the relative efficiency of a big coal fired plant, the relative inefficiency of an ICE, the transmission line losses, everything, end-to-end, the electric car running on coal fired power emits half the CO2 of an ICE car. 2. Electricity can be produced by all sorts of methods that emit no CO2.
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Whilst what you say is true there's the refilling time to take into account.
A full tank of liquid fuel takes minutes to pour in.
A full 'tank' of electricity takes hours.
Not to mention that a full tank of liquid fuel gets you about 700 miles of travel whereas a full battery only ~350
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Its *very* unusual for a full tank to get you 700 miles of travel, even at optimum fuel efficiency for the particular vehicle.
In fact, tanks are typically sized such that the vehicle in question will get in the neighborhood of 400-500mi to a tank.
Small, fuel efficient vehicles tend to have ~9 gallon tanks, this would require nearly 80mpg to reach 700 miles.
Medium-sized vehicles tend toward ~14 gallons, and would require 50mpg to reach 700 miles.
It's incredibly rare that a vehicle large enough to be paired w
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Large trucks routinely get 700+ miles out of a tank full, or actually two tanks full. Of course they usually carry over 100 gal per side too. However, this is really because "time is money" in the trucking business and it's all about getting miles behind the load ASAP. You don't want to stop for fuel every 300 miles if you can help it, you want to book as many miles as your hours allow and only stop when the law requires it.
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A full 'tank' of electricity takes hours.
With current state of technology, yes. There's no theoretical reason why this couldn't be improved to the same time as liquid fuel, or better. We're still improving battery technology. In addition, people can plug in their cars whenever they're parked, reducing the need to go to a service station for a quick charge.
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Teslas can charge in minutes at a super-charger, don't forget. Clearly not as quickly as a liquid-fuelled car, but it's still not hours.
And as someone else pointed out - 700 miles? Pull the other one.
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better products at 4x the price (and profitability remains a mystery.)
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Giant Tesla Coils mounted on top of the high voltage cross-country transmission line towers.
Now that's what I would call a Supercharger! :) (The tinfoil-hat crowd is going to have a tough time near those, though)
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Re:Impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
Please tell me, where can I charge my Tesla S in 10 minutes or less along the corridor from Atlanta to New York, because I am certainly not going to make it from Atlanta to New York without charging.
This is not range anxiety, this is practical realism.
No, it's making up special cases to prove your point.
There are places out west that a proper petro fueled vehicle owner will suffer the same anxiety.
Hell, once on a Sunday trip in Pennsylvania on my motorcycle the one gas station along my remote route where I planned to refuel my motorcycle had closed. Want to talk about range anxiety?
Three points 1. Range anxiety is most definitely not confined to the Spawn of Satan Tesla. I have relatives who start sweating at 3/4 a tank of proper gasoline fuel.
2. Making up special cases is silly, like looking down on people who drive car, because you want to haul stuff, therefore why would anyone want to get a car rather than a pickup truck? All vehicles have their purposes, and maybe not everyone needs to go from Atlanta to New York with only 10 minutes to spare. You need to take a gas guzzler across the western desert some time.
3. Don't want a Tesla? No problem - don't buy one. Just because you have to have a vehicle that has to meet certain specifications doesn't mean that everyone has to. Your major issue is infrastructure, which is easily addressed over time. As the infrastructure improves, we'll see the recharge issue start to go away. Don't forget that at one time, horses had a better refueling infrastructure than petrofueled vehicles. Of course, at that point you would probably be decrying those gasoline powered vehhicles you defend so much today.
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The small subgroup of middle age, mid life crises men, who bought the model S as some form of maintaining their sexual prowess only to be overcome with 'range anxiety'.
And here I thought the model S purchase was about assuaging their guilt over their incredibly large and expensive carbon foot print that their rich lives had.
Where is all the "bigger the foot the bigger the... " logic here?