Fun With Electricity

[PonoBill]

Diane took delivery of her new Tesla Model S P85+ a few days ago. What a car. I conned her into the performance package. Good choice. It's as quick as any performance car I've ever driven. Seats five in marvelous comfort--the back seats are great--and carries a HUGE amount of stuff. Of course I'll never get to put wet or sandy stuff anywhere near the car, so that utility is limited for me.

It's a rocket though, and it handles as well as any GT car I've driven. So far the acceleration is only limited by Diane's cursing at me. How strange to have a car go from 0-60MPH in 4.2 seconds that seats five (or seven with the kid seats in the back) and feels like an upscale Mercedes or a downscale Bentley.
411 horsepower, 440 ft-lbs of torque, and the torque curve is flat up to about 80 MPH. I passed a car and a semi strung together while Di and I were driving to the Dalles. I pulled out and punched it, and by the time I reached the nose of the semi I was doing over 120. Totally noiseless except for the screaming.

Pics later.

[Admin]

Pics later.

Pics now.

-Vicarodon Vicarious

[spookini]

Something to be said for the combustion engine -- at least partially drowns out the spousal unit's screaming about our driving habits...

[PonoBill]

MM'kay..


Charging in the Garage

My version of a Tesla



Control panel






Front trunk

Glass Roof retracted

[LaPerouseBay]

Wow, that is a ton of power.  Must be amazing to drive.  Beautiful lines too.  Love the trunk in front. 

Nice fluid design of the wheels - not too few - not too many spokes.  Look functional too, like turbine blades. 

But, (which is kinda crazy to say about such a marvel of engineering like a Tesla) the blades are moving air in different directions on either side of the car.  Drivers side pumping out (which is best for cooling and downforce) passenger side is reversed.

Doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the real world, other than looks.  At least that's my guess.  But it seem odd to me on a car that seems like a Lear jet vs. a bug smasher.

Cool car.  The torque must be thrilling.  I remember the first time I took of in a big passenger jet.  Smashing back in the seat is a great feeling.     

[jdmotes]

 Absolutely gorgeous car, Bill... I love those things and good for Lady Di, too. She deserves it!   paddle on,   JD

[laszlo]

Beautiful car. How long was your wait time for delivery after you ordered it? I just got an email from our local Santa Monica dealer (we went for a test drive a few months ago) that wait times have gone up to 3-4 months, due to high demand. It seems like Teslas have taken over the west side of LA lately, they are everywhere.

[PonoBill]

But, (which is kinda crazy to say about such a marvel of engineering like a Tesla) the blades are moving air in different directions on either side of the car.  Drivers side pumping out (which is best for cooling and downforce) passenger side is reversed.
   

Weird, huh. First thing I noticed. I'm sure the marketing department has some kind of answer for it, but I'd like to know the real reason. Only thing I can come up with is to have brake-cooling airflow without changing the underbody pressure much, one was or the other. But the car has a complete undertray that gets down within a few inches of the pavement at any speed that would matter, so I can't see that being significant.

Lazlo--I don't know what normal wait would be. When we ordered the car it was a two month wait, but we were leaving for Maui, so we had it delayed. Good thing, there have been a number of nice changes, and we kicked the options up to the P85+, which I think is just great. The standard 65 or 85 is fine, but the P+ has a bunch of handling tweaks that have reviewed very well.

Having an electric car that can smoke most IC performance cars in a straight line is perfect for Hollyweird. Smug ecopiousity without the performance hit. Better than driving a tacky Prius to the airport to get on your G550.

[starman]

This brings fond memories of one of my favorite Eric Cartman lines;

“We’ve got about ten minutes before this entire country is up in flames! If you wanna live, you’d better step on the gas! Oh wait, is this a Tesla? Sh*t! Well press on the prissy pedal! We’re gonna die!” 

[LaPerouseBay]

Weird, huh. First thing I noticed. I'm sure the marketing department has some kind of answer for it, but I'd like to know the real reason. 

It's economy.  Like you said, the airflow doesn't really matter. 

Interestingly, the original drawings for that car had the turbines uniform on either side.  Not so in production. 

You have a one size fits all wheel - either side.   

I can't see the Italians letting that one slide.  Such beautiful wheels, but reversed? Penso di no.   

That's another good reason the airflow likely doesn't mean anything.  If it did, I'll bet the hyper cars would use turbine spokes.

Edit:  Well, spank my ass and call me Nancy, the Veneno has 'em.  $4 million a pop. 

http://bcove.me/hn86xc6y

[SuppaTime]

It's economy.  Like you said, the airflow doesn't really matter. 

Airflow probably does matter more than you think. My neighbor in the gorge has a Tesla and has had problems with dust and dirt. Tesla just does not do well in dusty environments (we share a 1/4 mile long dirt/gravel driveway). His car developed problems which were traced back to the cooling system for the battery sucking in dirt from under the car which fouled the fan and filter.

Customer service for Tesla is pretty amazing though - they actually sent out a tractor trailer rig to his house, loaded the car inside the trailer, hauled it off for fixing, and returned it the same way. I was home when they dropped it off and they actually parked it in his garage for him!

Anyway, beautiful cars.

[Ichabod Spoonbill]

I'm pretty impressed with the alternate-fuel and hybrid cars coming out these days. Tesla is probably the coolest example. There are a lot more coming out too. These things can get 600–800 miles on one tank of gas.

I've been thinking seriously about something like this since Hurricane Sandy, which knocked out electricity and caused gas shortages in the New York area. The Ford C-Max plugin-hybrid is more in my price range. I like that it can run on pure gas or electricity. It's got 20 miles (they say) of pure electric range, which is my comment to work. The thing's a little small though. I'd love a plug-in hybrid CRV, which is what I'm driving now, but that dream probably won't happen.

The more options like this the better.

[PonoBill]

Diane has a Chevy Volt in Maui which I think is a remarkable car. (Yes, Diane does get all the cool cars). I can't believe they don't sell like hotcakes. Perhaps the lack of marketing explains that. No current automaker with both ICE and EV/hybrid cars seems to want to sell them. Analysts say GM loses about $50,000 on each Volt they sell. I assume that loss includes capital costs for constructing the production lines and so it's somewhat bogus, but still, perhaps that has a lot to do with why they don't market them--which would seem to lock in the loss. Given that loss level, Diane's Volt is actually a $95,000 car -- at breakeven. Ad dealer margin and manufacturer margin and it's at least $200,000

Fiat has a dynamite electric version of the 600, which they only sell in California and seem to have no interest in selling at all. I've never seen an advertisement for a Nissan Leaf.

It's not collusion with the oil companies, or part of the Zionist conspiracy, it's switching costs. It's going to be very hard to make money in the car industry while the infrastructure shifts. I think some of the current car makers will be unable to make that change--even if they currently seem to lead the charge. I don't think they can afford to lose that much money for that long. they have shareholders who hold them to a different standard than investors in a start-up do. If Tesla was making much money the wise investor would say they are not spending enough on gaining marketshare. If GMC tried the same thing their losses would cause their share price to plummet.

The transitions won't happen without government support. That's not political theory, it's just math.

Fortunately most of the infrastructure for EVs is already present. You can charge them in your garage. The support infrastructure to make EV's useful for long distance is only a few thousand charging stations in the US. You need gas stations on every corner because they are needed even for local travel, you don't need them for EVs. Once there's a charging station within a hundred miles in every direction you can travel an EV becomes a very practical vehicle for long and short distance. The only bug is the wait time. It won't be as quick as gasoline fueling for EVs unless bulk battery replacement becomes a norm (it won't, it's bogus, but Tesla is doing it to meet a silly CAFE requirement) but an 80% charge in 30 minutes after traveling 200 miles is acceptable.

Analysts have doubts that Tesla can build a profitable $40,000 car. I do too. The Model S is beautiful, but it's fairly spartan in many ways. I'm not certain what gets cut to build a cheaper car. 

But I wouldn't bet against Elon Musk. That isn't to say he is infallible, Tesla wouldn't be here without a lot of rescue efforts, but he's got balls and vision. Which has a lot to do with why we bought the car. I wanted to buy a bunch of the stock about the same time we were considering the car. If I had bought the amount I intended to (My broker talked me out of it) Diane's Tesla would have been free.

[SuppaTime]

Electric cars have some challenges to be successful. Much of the US still derives its power from coal fired plants, and of course the whole issue of global warming is going to put increased pressure on all of us to get off fossil fuels - gasoline and coal. So EV's look pretty good in the PNW where all power is hydroelectric, but they look less compelling in say the northeast US.

The good news is there are lots of alternative ways to produce electricity. The bad news is that those are slow to gain traction. And for EV's the further problem is energy density - the best batteries can do for energy storage is still 10 times less than gasoline and 100 times less than hydrogen.

Because hydrogen burns clean and has a very high energy density my guess would be hydrogen will power cars more than electricity in 50 years. But the difficulty with hydrogen is production. The easiest way to make hydrogen is hydrolysis, which of course uses electric power and puts us back at square one. But I believe there are solar catalyzed ways of production being worked on.

[TallDude]

A remodel project I designed included a charging area in the garage for my clients new Tesla. He gave me the charging spec's for a 50A charger. As they finished the project and bought the car, The clients said "we wanted the 90A charger." Fortunately, I had the spec's they originally gave me. They were pulling one of those"It's not our problem that you told the contractor to put in the wrong breaker". Attorney's. The 90A meant upgrading to a 400A panel. Which in turn meant tearing up driveway(s) to install a larger underground conduit from the transformer to the house. $ 25,000. extra minimum. I think they had an electrician come in after the building final and just put the 90A on the undersized panel. I'm sure this will become a new load calc requirement. Home car chargers. Every home will be required to have 400A panels. Even solar panels on a house, which typically generate around 4 to 5kw in the middle of a clear day, won't offset the the net use. Most people charge their cars at night while they sleep, when the panels are producing zero. I have clients that would have spent the $25k to have their car charge 1 hour faster.

It is a very cool car! I'm guessing Diane is fine with a slightly longer charge time