EPA Confirms Tesla's Model 3 Has a Range of 310 Miles (theverge.com) 283
Tesla's Model 3 has a confirmed range of 310 miles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "That figure applies to the long-range version of the Model 3, and echoes the vehicle specs released by Tesla back in July," reports The Verge. "It also makes the Model 3 one of the most efficient passenger electric vehicles on the market." From the report: The EPA's range is used as the advertised figure for electric vehicles that are sold in the US. The 310-mile range is an estimate of the number of miles the vehicle should be able to travel in combined city and highway driving from a full charge. That's 131 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGe) for city driving, 120 MPGe on the highway, and 126 MPGe combined. You'll have to pay more to get that extended range, though. Tesla said it would be selling a standard version of the Model 3, with just 220 miles of range, for $35,000. The long-range version will start at $44,000, the automaker says. Production on the standard version isn't expected to begin until 2018.
Personally I don't care (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Personally I don't care (Score:4, Funny)
Trailer hitch & towable generator should solve the problem
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Trailer hitch & towable generator should solve the problem
Sounds pretty inefficient. Better to go with a "long-range" hybrid like a Volt.
How is that not like a hybrid, an EV carrying an ICE along? The ICE is just externally towed rather than internally mounted. Sure backing up and parking is less convenient but inefficient hasn't been demonstrated. :-)
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A portable generator is not as efficient as a modern, fully integrated, ICE/electric motor combo. No way, no how. Not going to happen unless you literally throw 10's of thousands of dollars at your solution just to say you did.
Oh, and you want to TOW it? Might as well factor in the rolling resistance and (lack of) aerodynamics of that trailer plus generator. Really, it's a stupid idea for 99.999% of people. Either buy an ICE vehicle if you're doing 100's of miles away from civilization at a clip or get
Re: Personally I don't care (Score:2)
Sounds pretty inefficient.
Yeah; the "whoosh" suggests an energy loss...
Re: Personally I don't care (Score:2, Interesting)
A range extender can be a much smaller simpler engine. Think something like a lawnmower engine.
If it breaks, switching it out is pretty simple.
Re:Personally I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
Do not forget that an electric drivetrain is more efficient than an ICE drivetrain:
ICE drivetrain is 30% efficient per unit of energy source
Electric drivetrain is 90% efficient per unit of energy source
This means batteries need to have 30/90 = 1/3rd the energy density of gasoline for the electric vehicle to have the same energy usage at the wheels as the ICE vehicle.
Also:
1. An electric vehicle can be more aerodynamic than an ICE vehicle so an electric vehicle suffers less drag and therefore there is an efficiency gain over the ICE vehicle.
2. Electric vehicle can have regenerative braking systems which converts the kinetic energy back into stored electrical energy which makes an electric vehicle more efficient than an ICE vehicle on roads with varying gradients.
Therefore, the battery energy density is a major factor in the range of the vehicle but it is not the only factor.
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That's ... a very long way to say 'compare MPG with MPGe'
The tesla, at 130MPGe, is over 3x more energy efficient than even your 40 MPG hybrid. Done and done.
MPGe (Score:2, Redundant)
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What, you don't think of electricity in gallons? ;)
Re:Personally I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
They are [tesla.com] (and rapidly expanding). And that's just superchargers - including slower ones (but still including high power DC), look here [plugshare.com].
In your everyday life (aka, the vast majority of your time), instead of 5 minutes to detour to a gas station, a full charge takes 10 seconds: 5 to plug in, 5 to unplug. In the comfort of your garage.
On long trips, it charges during meal and bathroom / stretch breaks, about 75 miles range per 10 minutes charging at below 50% SoC. Take, for example, a 700 mile trip. At 70mph that's 10 hours (not counting breaks), so two meal breaks - say, a 20 minute lunch and a 30 minute dinner. 45 minutes charging. That adds about 375 miles, meaning 685 miles. Just one or two 10 minute stretch breaks (on your 10 hour trip) and that's your entire charging.
The only thing it doesn't work for is "sprint" trips, where you're basically trying to avoid all stops, eating in the car, minimizing all bathroom and rest breaks. And if you're the sort of person who does that... don't. Seriously, stop it; that's dangerous, not just to you, but to other drivers.
A belief only held by people who've never owned an EV. Because 1) supercharging rates aren't slow; 2) you can extend range significantly just by slowing down, at any point in time (unlike ICE vehicles, EVs increase in range down to around 20-25mph), and 3) in the absolute worst case (which almost never happens), you can ask to charge virtually anywhere. Farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Ranger station deep in a national park? You name it. And the answer in practice is almost always yes.
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On long trips, it charges during meal and bathroom / stretch breaks, about 75 miles range per 10 minutes charging at below 50% SoC. Take, for example, a 700 mile trip. At 70mph that's 10 hours (not counting breaks), so two meal breaks - say, a 20 minute lunch and a 30 minute dinner. 45 minutes charging. That adds about 375 miles, meaning 685 miles. Just one or two 10 minute stretch breaks (on your 10 hour trip) and that's your entire charging.
That's really nice, assuming of course that there are charging stations where you want to eat/stretch.
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They're about an hour apart, and constantly becoming denser.
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Where? In the top 5 big cities?
The US is a big country, and there's a lot of territory to cover between the major urban centers, to say nothing of the thousands of smaller cities, even more smaller towns. To say nothing of rural areas (maybe they'll just let us burn gasoline indefinitely since there are so few of us now). There's a long long long ways to go for electric vehicles to be widely viable.
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In your everyday life (aka, the vast majority of your time), instead of 5 minutes to detour to a gas station, a full charge takes 10 seconds: 5 to plug in, 5 to unplug. In the comfort of your garage.
... if you happen to have a garage and actually park your car inside the garage. I have a garage, but I park my car outside and would need a 50-foot cable to reach my car.
On long trips, it charges during meal and bathroom / stretch breaks, about 75 miles range per 10 minutes charging at below 50% SoC. Take, for example, a 700 mile trip. At 70mph that's 10 hours (not counting breaks), so two meal breaks - say, a 20 minute lunch and a 30 minute dinner. 45 minutes charging. That adds about 375 miles, meaning 685 miles. Just one or two 10 minute stretch breaks (on your 10 hour trip) and that's your entire charging.
... if you are willing to make sure that your route passes those charging stations, you are willing to accept the eating options at those places, and you are willing to accept the risk that there are no open spots when you arrive.
3) in the absolute worst case (which almost never happens), you can ask to charge virtually anywhere. Farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Ranger station deep in a national park? You name it. And the answer in practice is almost always yes.
Well, if the out-of-juice car happened to stop conveniently right next to the electric plug, that's great. Bu
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The mentally ill (e.g. hoarders) probably shouldn't be driving at all.
Yes, I hoard something called my wife's car in our garage. We have a 60 year old home that has an ostensibly two-car garage with 5 feet of clearance on one side and 6 inches on the other side. Because it's not practical to fit two cars in the garage, I park outside.
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I'm also wondering how this person is routing their trips to avoid superchargers.
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I'm also wondering how this person is routing their trips to avoid superchargers.
I live in a fairly sizable city with over a two million population count.
We currently have one supercharger fairly far south.
I live on the south west part of town and that supercharger is still a 15 minute drive from me away from the city center.
We do have one more scheduled to be built on the far north side, but won't be completed until the end of 2018.
I work roughly in the middle west or as many say slightly into the north west. The planned supercharger would be 20 or so minutes away (actually closer to
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We have a bit of a problem with electric vehicles here: about 50% of the housing stock has no off-street parking (let alone a garage). A huge percentage of our housing was built decades before cars were even invented. The thing is I live on an island and the most miles I can possibly do in a day would only be 60 or so, and an electric car would be ideal. I'd love to own one, but I can't because I have nowhere to charge it - there's no power anywhere near the car park at work, there's no power anywhere near
Re:Personally I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
Things weird about your reply.
1) You act like we're talking about normal driving, not emergencies.
2) You act like it's a bad thing to have an ability to greatly (2-3x) increase your range, something you don't have with ICE vehicles.
3) You act like you only have two options ("highway speeds" and "20mph"), rather than a continuous range curve between those points.
4) You ignore the entire rest of what you're replying to.
I gave you a bloody map, what more do you want? And why are you putting "charging stations" in quotes? Superchargers are real. There are 7619 supercharger stalls operational today (aka, not counting those under construction). The average spacing along US interstates is about 70 miles (a bit more in more densely populated areas, a bit less in less densely populated ones), evenly spaced. Doubling by the end of next year. And that's just Tesla's network.
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I will say, as an EV owner but someone who can not afford a Tesla (we have a used Leaf) it infuriates me that Tesla has spent so much effort building a network that they will not even let others pay to use. I know they are going for the vendor lock in vertical market, but it is slowing down overall EV adoption..
Re:Personally I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
This is not true. Tesla has been trying for ages to get other manufacturers to use their network; they *want* higher utilization (for paying customers, of course); their goal is 30% utilization at Superchargers. It's Nissan that you have to complain to, not Tesla.
Re:Personally I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly true, they have been trying to get others to "License" their charging standard. Tesla built a standard and the rest of the industry built a standard (and Tesla refused to participate).
Now to top that Tesla sells an adapter so that Their cars can use the Industry standard for quick charge, but refuse to sell the licence for their standard to be used in an adapter that allows others to use their chargers.
So in simple terms, their "trying" has been wanting to get a kick back for every car built, Not actually removing barriers for within the industry.
Again as a consumer and end user, i'd buy an adapter and pay to use their chargers if i could, but i can't because the option doesn't exist. Also i'd love to buy their car, but i can't because they do not have anything within my affordability range.
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I gave you a bloody map, what more do you want? And why are you putting "charging stations" in quotes? Superchargers are real. There are 7619 supercharger stalls operational today (aka, not counting those under construction). The average spacing along US interstates is about 70 miles (a bit more in more densely populated areas, a bit less in less densely populated ones), evenly spaced. Doubling by the end of next year. And that's just Tesla's network.
I'd love an electric car but the lack of charging stations is a real issue. It's going to be overcome but 7619 charging stations really isn't a solid number compared with 150,000 gas stations.
I live near Boston and during my 70 mile round trip commute there are no charging stations en route or nearby either end. The closest station is well out of the way, so my only option is my house which would need a high power outlet to be routed. I would have to carefully monitor the charge and ensure to plug the ca
Re: Personally I don't care (Score:2)
...and during my 70 mile round trip commute there are no charging stations en route or nearby either end.
An EV won't meet my needs but it sounds like one would meet yours... unless you don't have A/C at home...??
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In any case, a 70 mile commute is right in the sweet spot for many of the BEVs.
As for home charging, hell yeah you should install a 220v charger! I just had my electrician put a dryer outlet in the garage and then I hung a charging station on the wall next to it. I get home, I plug in. It takes maybe 10 seconds. When I'm ready to leave agai
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2) You act like it's a bad thing to have an ability to greatly (2-3x) increase your range, something you don't have with ICE vehicles.
It's called a gas can. All you have to do is fill one and stick in the back. Other options includes a siphon to get gas from another ICE vehicle (car, boat, 4-wheeler, lawn tractor, etc.). Beyond that you can increase mileage in an ICE car by going slower speeds and turning off electronics. Not to the extent of an electric, but ICE cars do not have to go as far to find a fueling spot if low on gas...
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Take, for example, you linked to a completely different car, nearly a decade ago, being driven on a track (which represents vastly faster energy consumption, whether gas or electric), in a faked segment (and yes, it was faked. Read the court ruling - they didn't rule that it wasn't faked, only that A) it didn't hurt Tesla's sales, and B) viewers wouldn't actually believe that everything that happens in Top Gear is real).
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Re: Personally I don't care (Score:2)
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If it's that type of party, I irrationally think wolves are creeping up behind me every time I walk to my car in the dark.
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That would only be irrational if it wasn’t true. /cue creepy music and wolves howling in the distance.
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I am just as bad with my phone,if it goes past 50% I have to plug it in.
Well, a smartphone can end up spending quite a bit of battery even if you're not interacting with it. Particularly if you're doing something like GPS tracking, updates, cloud sync or whatever in the background or even just a faulty app causing 100% CPU load. An EV shouldn't really lose any significant amount of power on its own except for long time storage, as I understand it there's a roughly 1%/day vampire drain but for a commute or weekend trip it should be completely negligible and if it's plugged in th
Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The distance between my two work locations is 305 miles.
It should cover that then, but it won't. T\he problem is that the EPA mileage takes into account neither sweltering summer heat nor winter temperatures way below freezing. Especially at really low temperatures, the range of electric cars is severely reduced, as in sometimes only getting half the range.
And then it does not take two minutes to fill it, with stations at pretty much every crossroads. Even if you should be lucky enough to find a "rapid"
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, everyone knows if a new technology can't support your lifestyle, the solution is to redesign your lifestyle so that doesn't matter rather than sticking with the old technology. Got to keep upgrading and chucking the old technology in a landfill, even if the 'upgrade' is worse! Think of the environment!
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is always "that guy" who needs to drive 300 miles in a day regularly. 305 miles is at least a five hour drive. Do you do that 20% of the time?
20% of the time would be one trip between two work locations every two weeks (because it also involves a return trip). That's not all that uncommon, depending on your position.
But even 95% or 99% of the time would not be good enough. It's the worst case scenarios that's the problem. Say you come back from a long joyride, your batteries are almost flat, and then have to [go to a hospital because a relative was in an accident | go see an important customer the next state over | whatever else comes up] that
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Cant call uber? Cant call a taxi? For those extremely hypothetical contingency?
I've taken some long taxi rides before, because of emergencies.
A full tank is $40. A two hour taxi ride is more like $400 negotiated, and Uber around $300, but good luck getting one - they'd rather ride local surge pricing than go on long trips with zero return fares.
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You're arguing that this is an issue, when 99.999% of people will never have this problem.
Or to put it another way, 99.999% of people may have this problem. It's adding an unnecessary risk that's the issue. One you simply don't have, even with the cheapest gasoline or hybrid vehicle.
If you belong to the 0.001% that can plan your life completely and know for certain that you can't enter such a situation, you likely have a very boring life too.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
Or to put it another way, 99.999% of people may have this problem. It's adding an unnecessary risk that's the issue. One you simply don't have, even with the cheapest gasoline or hybrid vehicle.
Of course, with a gasoline vehicle, you might have the fuel pump or alternator or radiator go. None of which are a problem in electric vehicles.
I owned a Toyota Corolla for 17 years before it died (mostly of body rust). It probably broke down about 10 times, which is about 0.16% unreliable on a daily basis, or 99.84% reliable. That is rather worse than the 99.999% number given above.
This argument reminds me of the time a Tesla ran over a large piece of metal, warned the driver that it was going to shut down (giving them time to pull to the side of the road), and a few minutes later caught on fire. Gasoline cars catch on fire A LOT (usually with less warning); they're full of gasoline, get extremely hot, and generate sparks. But some people got the idea that electric cars were major fire hazards. People always focus on unlikely problems while not considering the common problems.
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You're arguing that this is an issue, when 99.999% of people will never have this problem.
I pay house insurance in case my house burns down, even though 99.999% of people never have this problem. You are saying it is a bad idea to buy insurance?
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300 miles at lest five hour drive? Please. I drive 75 mph on most interstates in the southwest. Sometimes faster. It's a four hour ride.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Informative)
There is always "that guy" who needs to drive 300 miles in a day regularly. 305 miles is at least a five hour drive. Do you do that 20% of the time? If so, you need to find a new job because you are wasting your life away in a car.
And for some reason, "that guy" *always* shows up in comment threads on articles like this one. He also often needs the cargo capacity of a pickup truck, and sometimes is driving to some shack in the deep woods with no electricity. Oh, and also assumes his use case is typical, or at least a complete blocker to anyone adopting EVs.
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Re: Impressive (Score:2)
If so, you need to find a new job because you are wasting your life away in a car.
It often beats wasting it away under artificial lighting at a desk behind a screen.
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There is always "that guy" who needs to drive 300 miles in a day regularly. 305 miles is at least a five hour drive. Do you do that 20% of the time? If so, you need to find a new job because you are wasting your life away in a car.
I did know someone who did this sort of mileage. he was a courier. 99.99% of people don't!
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It's not going to be a good fit for you, but there's no need to exaggerate. Plowing your way through heavy snow/slush it could potentially get as bad as half, but ordinary cold winter conditions is more like a quarter. Superchargers don't appear by chasing leprechauns, either there is one between your work locations or there's not. Half an hour at a supercharger should give you ~170 miles and (310+170)*0.75 = 360 miles should make it just fine. And in the winter how fast are you going, 50 mph average? It's
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Just give the same respect to other people. There will be people who might find electric cars adequate.
At this point it is not the range, it is the price. The additional price of electric car does not justify the savings in fuel costs. So most people are not finding it compelling to try the new technology.
When the breakthrough comes and when there is cost savings, people will switch.
When el
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My Nissan Leaf is cheaper due to fuel savings than an equivalent petrol car. Of course I could buy a cheaper Hyundai, but it wouldn't offer the same level of comfort or performance as the Leaf. It would automatically de-frost itself in the morning, which I'm really appreciating at the moment.
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Leaf charging is 1/3rd the speed of Tesla charging. Leafs really don't work for road tripping. Road tripping in a Tesla means stopping for a meal, then leaving with a couple hundred miles more charge. Road tripping in a Leaf.... not so much.
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No reason to be surprised. The left has plenty of idiots and bigots of all stripes. The main difference between the left and right is that the left tends to not elect those people or pay attention to their whining screeds.
But the troll probably doesn't care about left or right; they're just trying to make excuses for their limited endowments.
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Re: Impressive (Score:2)
...the left tends to not elect those people
You mean there are worse ones?!
Getting pretty decent for road trips. (Score:5, Informative)
The newer range is really great, about as much as most cars.
But the thing you'd want to larger range for is really road trips, which per day would usually be composed of at least two 300 mile segments. So you have to figure out at least two charging points per day of trip, as well as overnight.
Now they have done a great job of bringing superchargers online [tesla.com] where a lot of trips I could probably plot a path that included enough superchargers. Evening is still an issue though, lots of places it is hard to find somewhere to plug in. But with that kind of range, maybe it would be enough just to find one in the city I was staying in and charge up before I went to the hotel.
I think it's close enough it would work for most road trips, except for some remote areas.
Re: Getting pretty decent for road trips. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm liking the plug in hybrid idea a lot more than pure electric personally.
The Prius gets 25, and would probably cover half of my miles (no road trips, and leave me about 15 short on a weekend as I'm often not home). The Chevy volt (at 50) would cover essentially all of my none long distance driving, even a pretty chore busy weekend.
Wither way, there'd be no range anxiety, with half or less the trips to the gas station, and lower cost to maintain (less oil changes, less breaks, I assume an engine running
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I think there are a few ways in which all electric is superior, the main one being performance over pretty much any hybrid I have seen... that's not important to everyone, but it is to a lot of people. That's primarily a Tesla feature though, not generalized to all electric cars.
The aspect I do like is simplicity, with no gasoline engine at all there is less to go wrong.
I still think in the end that hydrogen fuel-cell electrics will win out but Tesla's making a great case for fully battery powered vehicles
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Plug in fuel cell, or pure fuel cell?
Because I don't think there's a great way to make hydrogen (correct me if I'm wrong). Sure, it can be made from hydrocarbons cleaner and more efficiently than a small engine can power (and likely charge) a car, but essentially a hydrogen tank is a quick to charge battery, or it uses fossil fuels, I don't think it'll really take off. Much better (IMO) to have 90+% power grid electric driving, the rest fossil fuel.
I wonder what Tesla could do performance wise if they made
Re: Getting pretty decent for road trips. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I don't think there's a great way to make hydrogen (correct me if I'm wrong)
There's not quite yet but there area lot of very promising cheaper ways to produce hydrogen coming to fruition over the next ten years.
It has a lot of benefits, in that you can fuel up as fast as cars, and easily convert gas stations to store hydrogen. Any place with a lot of water can be a potential production source.
Perhaps what will happen is cars will trend all electric, but charging stations will be altered to work off huge fuel cells so they are not such a huge draw off the electric grid.
That's a big factor I don't see considered, what really has to change if 80+% of all cars are electric (as I expect they will be in 10-20 years). No matter what there is a huge infrastructure challenge ahead and I feel like hydrogen as fuel can be worked out before extra electrical grid capacity along with the many, many more charging stations that would be required for much wider use of electric cars.
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There's been a lot of very promising hydrogen related technologies coming to fruition over the next ten years for almost thirty years.
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There's not quite yet but there area lot of very promising cheaper ways to produce hydrogen coming to fruition over the next ten years. [...] Any place with a lot of water can be a potential production source.
They all require something expensive as input, in the case of electrolysis that's very clean water. You may not have noticed, but that's already at a premium on this planet, and it's becoming more scarce and thus expensive. You can of course make it any old time through steam distillation, but on that scale it takes a bunch of energy which is also expensive. Storage is also still an expensive problem to solve. GM and Honda's partnership is expected to produce a cost-effective fuel cell in the next generatio
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They all require something expensive as input, in the case of electrolysis that's very clean water. You may not have noticed, but that's already at a premium on this planet, and it's becoming more scarce and thus expensive.
You should try to learn a bit about a topic before writing about them, because you can't be more wrong.
Tap water is just fine for electrolysis. One might even need to add salt or other impurities to it to get it to work. If you actually tried to use pure water, it'll backfire on you, because pure water doesn't conduct electricity, and the electric current in the water is what generates those H2 and O2 bubbles.
Water is also not very expensive, in fact, it's negligible compared to the energy cost. My ci
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My Fusion Energi only got 26 miles (on a good day), but even on cold days, it got me to work, where I could plug in. Unless I had to run out to a supplier or a plant, I was able to use it without an ICE for 100% of my "normal days."
On the other hand, on those two or three days per month where I had to run between Flat Rock, Dearborn, Auburn Hills, Clinton Township, and then home, 320 miles would not have been enough (but of course, with the hybrid ICE, my tank was worth 600 miles, and I could gas it up anyw
Re:Getting pretty decent for road trips. (Score:4, Interesting)
You might have an interest in checking out Björn Nyland on Youtube. He works as a courier in Norway, driving Teslas a crazy number of kilometers every year.
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Re:Getting pretty decent for road trips. (Score:5, Informative)
The newer range is really great, about as much as most cars.
Absolutely not. Your information is seriously out of date.
I'll give you two examples of pretty mainstream cars. First, is the 2016 three row Honda Pilot "gas guzzler". I am getting anywhere between 23 and 27mpg cruising on interstates, and it has 20 gallon gas tank, so the range is +400 miles. The second one is the 2017 Honda Accord. It has 17 gallon tank, and I am observing 33mpg in mixed driving, resulting again +500 mile range.
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On the other hand, the Honda Element gets just short of 290 miles running the tank dry. Safer to fill up at around 270. I wish I could plug it in when it's parked in my garage because I spend far more time at home than on the road, but unfortunately it wants gasoline and I dont have a gasoline outlet in my garage, just an electrical outlet.
I'd love to get a Tesla, but I think I've got at least another ten years before the Element wears out. I did take it on a road trip in 2006, but that was my last road tri
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On the other hand, the Honda Element gets just short of 290 miles running the tank dry. Safer to fill up at around 270.
My old-ass A8 Quattro will get around 400 miles on a full tank if I am gentle with the pedals, and while going as fast as I reasonably want to on public roads. My 240SX would get over 500, I miss the shit out of that car. It was pre-OBD2, with just one O2 sensor and no knock sensor.
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Is a 500 mile range really that useful though? The >300 mile range of the Model 3 requires 5 hours of driving to deplete, and then 45-60 minutes of charging to recover. Practically most people would say stop every couple of hours to charge for 15 minutes, taking a bathroom and refreshment break at the same time.
So unless you plan to drive for 8 hours non-stop, which is not safe and illegal for commercial drivers in the EU, it seems like there is little practical advantage to an EV with a >300 mile ran
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My 10 year old Clio gets 625miles out of the tank. But all of that is completely irrelevant since I never drive more than about 150miles without taking a break anyway.... even on really long roadtrips.
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But with that kind of range, maybe it would be enough just to find one in the city I was staying in and charge up before I went to the hotel.
Marriott seems to be working very hard to not only add a ton of EV charging stations, but to give them very convenient parking locations. The Marriott hotels I've stayed at in 2017 all seem to have 20+ charging stations. I don't know about other brands, however.
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which per day would usually be composed of at least two 300 mile segments.
NO! If you're doing 300 mile segments in one stretch you'd a danger to yourself, your family, and every other car on the road after about 150miles.
Do whatever roadtrips you want, but unless you have a completely self driving car, don't pretend that this requirement is in any way sane.
Dubious Build Quality (Score:5, Informative)
I'll wait a few more years. I know a few folks who love love love their Teslas, but they keep having to bring them in for service once a month for various problems (albeit minor in the grand scheme of things). You'd think for a car this expensive, the kinks would be all worked out.
Reminds me of Delorean's issues when they started out.
Re:Dubious Build Quality (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're seeing is a combination of selection bias and the high media / public interest in Tesla. Consumer Reports rates the Model S as "above average" in terms of reliability (they expect Model 3 to be "average"). Model X, however, is still "below average", so that's legit.
It's also worth noting that Tesla consumer satisfaction ratings always top the industry, at around 90%.
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No. What I'm saying is that A) people who weren't bringing their cars in wouldn't be mentioning their lack of bringing cars in to their friends, and B) people whose friends hadn't been bringing that up to them wouldn't be bothering to post anecdotes about their friends not bringing their cars in.
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but they keep having to bring them in for service once a month
Wow, observer bias much? What did you read that in the Daily Mail which is repeating the article about one guy who breaks something every month and call it data?
Tesla's reliability is generally considered well above average.
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Apparently Telsa's cars cost $2000/year to service [seekingalpha.com] on average. This sounds like a real issue that has not been sufficiently discussed.
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Been driving a Model S since 2015, racked up 100km in about 2.5 yrs.
What! 100 kilometer? just 60 miles or so in 2.5 years? No wonder it did not need any service!
How to triple it (Score:2)
I so do wish Tesla would make a hybrid. (Score:2)
Lectric cars are taking off (Score:2)
I have yet to see a Tesla in my town, but I have seen Nissan Leafs ("Leaves"?) literally every day for the past fortnight when travelling across town. If I had to guess, perhaps 1 in 50 cars I see at the moment is a Leaf.
That blows my mind.
Many have been of different colours and some had signwriting for small businesses. Either we've had a massive rise in their popularity or it's a very persistent and dedicated marketing campaign.
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If an automaker fails to met the percentage, they have to buy credits from a manufacturer which exceeded their quota. This is what keeps Tesla afloat.
If an automaker fails to earn
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Interesting.
Not sure that applies in this case though, as I do not live in the US, let alone California, and there are no subsidies here.
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Wild guess: you're in the UK.
(if not, more details about the vehicle, please)
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Hell I'm in Canada and my old '96 Saturn SW2 that finally gave up with a subframe failure after hitting a cumbling chunk of overpass a few years ago, would still get around 38-42mpg on most trips. When it was newerish back in '96/97 I'd once gotten 51mpg(460mi on 9US gallons oh the joy of filling the tank for $5 in Indianapolis no less), most of the time it was right around 40mpg(which was common for the SL/SW series), even when I drove cross-country from southern ontario through the US, through N.Dakota,
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He writes with an American accent, so I don't think he's in the UK.
My (Euro model) 2007 Honda Civic uses 5.5L/100km which is >50 Imperial MPG while having a large interior (fold the seats back and it makes a good compact van, it's a hatchback and a lot more space efficient than the US models - I have no idea why Honda doesn't sell the good version of the Civic over there).
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The myth that just won't die. [acs.org]
Re:Coal Per Charge? (Score:5, Informative)
So how much actual coal is that per mile?
Probably takes 2000 pounds of coal to make the electricity to charge it up once?
Especially the coal electricity California imports from Utah.
The math's pretty easy: according to http://www.coaleducation.org/lessons/twe/ctele.htm [coaleducation.org], it takes about one pound of coal to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity. The long range battery has a capacity of 75kWh, so that'd be about 75 pounds of coal. Assuming a gas vehicle gets 50mpg, the gasoline needed to travel 310 miles weighs 39 pounds, a far cry from your 2000 pounds claim. Either way, a centrally-located power plant would be able to more readily control its emissions than a smaller, mobile gasoline engine.
Depending on your power mix, that's a worst-case scenario. In California, which you mention, PG&E generates ~70% of its power from renewable and greenhouse gas-free sources [pge.com], like nuclear, hydro, and unspecified "renewable" sources. 17% is from natural gas, which is very much cleaner than gasoline or coal, and "unspecified" other sources. Sounds much less polluting than gasoline.
EVs have the advantage that the source of the power feeding the grid can be changed without requiring all users to switch to something else: switching all gasoline cars to something that's compatible with their engines and fuel systems but is less polluting and damaging to the environment would be quite difficult. Replacing aging coal power plants with cleaner-burning natural gas plants dramatically reduces emissions while still pushing the same electrons through wires. Adding nuclear, wind, solar, etc. can further improve the cleanliness of electricity supply without any change from consumers.
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? Ethanol... E85 and flex fuel cars already exist, most modern cars are already E10 or more compatible.
All modern cars are E10 compatible, because you can and will get E10 out of the pump in California during part of the year whether you like it or not. As it turns out, though, any car that isn't sitting can pretty much handle E10. Seriously traditional parts like leather accelerator pump diaphragms would probably wear out quicker, if there were any left intact today. There was one in my 1960 Dodge Dart's 650 Carter...
However, ethanol is crap. Cellulosic ethanol production has never met up with its promises,
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From that 75 pounds of coal, only 55.2kwh make it to the battery.
Fair enough. Of course, the well-to-wheel costs for gasoline is non-trivial either. In California, for example, coal only makes up a fraction of the total power supply, at least from PG&E, so the electricity is relatively clean.
" "unspecified" other sources. Sounds much less polluting than gasoline."
Such sources include bagasse or other crop waste, sewage and landfill gas, sawdust/wood waste (from wood manufacturing) and black liquor (paper production). Don't confuse renewable with clean.
True, but renewable stuff is generally closer to CO2-neutral than gasoline production and use: crops will still get harvested, sewage and landfills will still get used, wood products and paper will still get manufactured, etc., so using the waste streams from those things as fuel
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In the UK at least (and many European countries), 0 lbs of coal. The UK has had increasing numbers of days where no coal fired power station has been running at all. Coal is on the way out and will be gone completely within the next 20 years. An average of something like 50% of the UK's power is from low/no CO2 generation (nuclear, wind). The rest is CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) which is very thermodynamically efficient especially when compared to a petrol engine in a car.
So at least here, you should b
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Which "isn't that great"? Lithium is an element. Nothing happens to it over time. It's intercalated into the anodes and cathodes. This is the main place where degradation occurs in modern li-ion batteries. The reference to graphene (not graphite) batteries is an anode tech (normal anodes are graphite).
Regardless, typical degradation on Tesla packs is 4% in the first year, then under 1% in each subsequent year.