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Test Driving the Tesla Roadster
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jul 19, 2006 08:34 PM
from the 1.21-gigawatts dept.
from the 1.21-gigawatts dept.
stacybro writes "Wired has an article about the Tesla Roadster. It is similar to other electric cars that we have seen in that the electric engine's serious torque will allow it to do 0-60mph in about 3 seconds. Part of what is different about this is that they are using over 6,831 laptop-type lithium-ion batteries. They are claiming the range is about 250 miles. As the battery tech for laptops improves, so will the range of these cars. The car will run about $80,000, which is about par for an exotic two-seater. So who is doing the poll on which tech CEO will be seen driving one first? My guess is one of the Google or E-Bay guys, since they are investors. It is nice to see more companies serious about helping to getting rid of our oil dependency. It is odd that the big car companies aren't more on this track!"
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Electric Car Faster Than A Ferrari or Porsche 741 comments
jumpeel writes "CNN's Business 2.0 has photos and video of a Silicon Valley-made electric car with a 0-60 acceleration rate that's faster than a Ferrari Spider and a Porsche Carrera. From the article: 'In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.' The X1 is built by Ian Wright whose valley startup WrightSpeed intends to make a 'a small-production roadster that car fanatics and weekend warriors will happily take home for about $100,000 --a quarter ton of batteries included. The X1 crushed the Ferrari in an eighth-mile sprint and then in the quarter-mile, winning by two car lengths.'"
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Backslash: Electric Cars and Their Discontents 348 comments
The most hotly contested issue raised by yesterday's post about the lithium-ion battery-powered Tesla roadster is only tangentially related to the car itself; instead, it's the energy generation and storage required for electric cars more generally to operate. Read on for the Backslash summary of the conversation, including several of the comments that defined the conversation.
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Technology: Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars 520 comments
jamie found the news that Tesla Motors is delivering roadsters in California. (We've been following developments on the Tesla front for a couple of years now.) According to a letter from the CEO, "9 production Roadsters have arrived in California, another 3 arrive this weekend, and they will keep arriving at the rate of 4 per week... In fact, currently there are 27 Roadsters in various stages of assembly." The early owners must be proud, but there could be complications.
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Global "Dependencies" (Score:4, Insightful)
Now all we have to do is get rid of our electronics, consumer products and innovations dependencies, and we can tell the rest of the world to take a hike!
If only all countries could have such a lack of inter-relatedness with their neighbors, imagine what a beautiful world it would be...
Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Until something replaces Coal power plants as the main method of generating electricity, you're just replacing one evil for the other.
Yes, I'm aware of Nucular, Hydro, Wind, Tidal, Natrual Gas. Doesn't matter. Coal is the most popular choice today.
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Interesting)
The US has vast reserves of coal. We wouldn't have to rely on the Middle East. And it is easier to cut pollution from relatively few centralized sources than it is from hundreds of millions of cars. And if something better than coal comes along, it's easier to switch relatively few power plants than hundreds of millions of cars. Etc, etc.
I'm going to give you a pass on "nucular" because a dictionary guy I heard on the radio said it's a regionalism, not barbarism that is like nails on a chalkboard to educated people.
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Re:20% of US oil imports from mideast (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that a loss of 20% of the oil and the consequent increase in fuel prices would cause a very severe economic impact - so yes, the US *is* reliant on that oil. Unless the US can do without 20% of its oil tomorrow with no consequences, then it's reliant on it.
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there are better solutions then coal, but we have over 50% of our power coming from coal, so improving coal will happen quicker then scrapping the system and replacing it with other systems (solar concentrators, tidal, wind, or other low eviroment impact systems). The is no reason we can't do both and enjoy both short term and long term gains. They're not mutually exclusive.
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Has already happened in my home country, which generates 79% of its energy [uic.com.au] in nuclear power plants. Now can I get my electric car ? ;-)
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Today.
Today.
Today.
FUCKING Today.
You can see past today, can't you?
I'm so sick of people who can't see past today.
It does matter, if you can see past today.
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there is. It's not like the land between windmills suddenly becomes useless for farming. Winds largest problem is that it's unreliable, so there will be times of low production, but that would not be a big issue for cars. Cars are standing still most of the time, so they can basically charge when there is wind.
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Re:Today is where it's at, like it or lump it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's right. Let's look at the Wright Brothers first flight shall we. Well, that's obviously such a useless machine. Range measured in hundreds of yards? Only carry one person. Likely to die.
The 250 mile range is perhaps too short for many people, but I bet the majority of car journeys are well within this range. If people started purchasing such vehicles as second/third cars then the technology would improve. As the number of units sold increased, the unit price would come down. Competition would be encouraged, inovation would be rewarded and some of the bigger players would start looking into it. It's already happening because Toyota/Honda have decided it will happen and want to be first with the hybrids. They are expensive, but some people are buying them. It happens in all new technology. Mobile phones, digital cameras, everything new - they start off really pricey and the early adopters buy 'em. Soon though, economies of scale bring the prices down, and the technology improves as the market expands.
I don't think anyone expects everyone to immediatly chop in their beloved gas-guzzlers for some electric golf cart and start hugging trees, but this vehicle probably does have a market. If the Gov could give tax breaks - such as allowing tax free re-charging whilst at work, it could further encourage the take-up of the technology by reducing the cost of ownership.
This might even mean that in a few years when you have to get new batteries for your Tesla, the new ones will be cheaper, lighter, and provide a greater range because the tech has moved on.
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Re:Today is where it's at, like it or lump it (Score:5, Insightful)
15 minutes on the charger might get you another 15-20 miles. And 220 volts at 70 amps is a pretty hefty 15 kilowatts, so to have a dozen cars sitting at the local McDonalds charging is going to be draining about 180 kW from their coinpurse. That is a serious amount of juice. Also, I'm skeptical that you'll be getting 250 miles at 70 mph. If I remember right, electric motor efficiency and power typically increase with load, but fall off with speed, which makes them awesome for say, a 0-60 run in 3 seconds, but marginal at best for high speed cruising. That 250 mile range estimate is probably at significantly lower speeds.
Big rigs generally run around 5 mpg, but it varies quite a bit around that number depending on the truck, the load, and the speed. Few truckers drive at the most efficient speed because it increases the labor costs significantly.
If you're suggesting running commercial trucks on electricity, forget it for the foreseeable future. It's definitely been considered. Not only is there the conflicting speed issues I mentioned above, but you run up against the energy density limitations of batteries fast. Assuming the numbers from the article are correct (I doubt it...something isn't quite adding up according to my gut) and unrealistically taking the charge/discharge at 100% efficiency, it's storing up 194 MJ. Gasoline holds about 120 MJ/gallon, so the 1000 pounds of batteries (according to the Tesla website) are equivalent to about 1.5 gallons of gas (6.3 pounds/gal). Divide that by an efficiency of around 30% and you've got a 32:1 energy density ratio in favor of gasoline. For a truck to haul the equivalent of 150 gallons of fuel (actually diesel, not gas, but close enough), it would need about 30,000 pounds of batteries. But then you have to go farther and take into account that 2/3's of its cargo capacity has been replaced by fuel, so you need to make 3 times the number of trips. And you've got a lot of trucks either sitting idle recharging or having their 30,000 pounds of batteries swapped out every few hundred miles.
Obviously these are really rough numbers, but other engineers have already looked at the idea in more detail and rejected it.
I'm not trash-talking the Tesla. It looks like a lot of fun, but like all sports cars, it's a toy and not a good comparison for commercial trucking. Most of a car's weight is itself, be it gas or electric. Most of a truck's weight is it's cargo.
For the record, I think electric can work extremely well for short range commuting (5-10 miles on city streets), but if you travel far, you'll realistically be looking at gas.
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery power isn't about saving energy anyway, it's often about shifting the pollution to a big facility that can handle it instead of having heavy pollution control equipment to move about. The first hybrid car I saw, back in 1987, embodied this principle and was designed to work at an underground mine. Above ground it ran on fuel, but below ground you wanted to minimise the air pollution as much as possible so it ran on batteries.
Personally I think the compelling area for electric vehicles as technology improves is as farming equipment or transport in remote areas - charge things up on wind, solar or whatever is handy instead of trucking in a lot of fuel.
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, you tell 'em! Forget about pragmatism and we'll create our own reality. Feasability? Screw it. Net environmental effect of the technology? Who needs to analyze anything when we've got dreamers! There's no point in looking at our world for how it is when we can see it like we want it to be.
The analogy that you provided about abusive parents is exactly the kind of absolutism that I disagree with -- and there's plenty of it to go around. What about when the definition of child abuse gets murky? What about when you've got a kid in an otherwise 'good' home, where the parents (for example) are pot smokers? Does it make sense to subject the kid to 'the system' by sticking them in a foster home (at best)? In the United States, it's not uncommon for child services to consider parents like that unfit. Absolutes don't work so well in a dynamic world.
In any case, we've already got an idealistic executive administration in the US who tends to think in black-and-white. Frankly, I think that we would do well with a bit of measured analysis.
To get back to the discussion, there's nothing wrong with trying to innovate, and I'm not seeing that argument anywhere. You're using a straw-man argument. However, there are plenty of hurdles which must be overcome when talking about electric cars...and it's important to recgonize that the electric car is no panacea for our environmental/political/economic ills. It just moves the problem elsewhere, and would continue to for the forseeable future. If it were really economically feasible, every major auto manufacturer would be selling an electric car right now.
Personally, I'm more interested in diesel power (utilizing vegetable-based fuel). The technology is already 100% available, very well developed, mass produced, and it can utilize the existing distribution infrastructure without serious modifications (I think that oil pipelines would need some help, however). Burning vegetable-based fuel also releases zero net greenhouse gas, since all carbon released into the atmosphere was originally metabolized from the atmosphere. Are there drawbacks? Certainly -- among other things, there is a poor public perception of diesel engines power and torque charasteristic, of being smelly, and having hard-to-find fuel. The former two have been resolved though development: Diesel emissions (as well as the sulphur odor) have been greatly reduced, and an Audi diesel race car won Le Mans last year, partly by churning out massive amounts of torque while maintaining better fuel economy than every other car in its class.
Again, getting back to the point, there is nothing wrong with pragmatism. In fact, the best way to deal with idealogues is to share a bit of reality. If you really believe in this, and this is truly an engineering problem, why not embrace the naysayers? Why not help find a solution to the real problems with the technology in question rather than smugly berate them in public? Your attempts to berate aren't convincing anyone of anything (except for the people who already share your ideals).
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Re:Global "Dependencies" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I don't see a necessary conflict between looking forward and pragatism. It's helpful sometimes to "assume" the existence of a thing, in a tentative way, because it allows you to think about the potential value of searching for that thing. Where it becomes unpragmatic is when you assume that thing is going to spring into existence because you wish it to be. Yet is equally dangerous to dismiss all change becuase we don't know the details in advance.
I think we are approaching a shift in the world's energy use. It's like waiting for an earthquake to generate a tsunami; inevitably it's going to come, but nobody can say precisely when. Uncertainties, such as whether a technology will be developed to extract heavy crude deposits, introduce decades of uncertainty into when the shift will occur. Thinking about, and planning for this shift takes resources away from current needs, and so it is easy to think of it as unpragmatic. However, I suspect that when a shift comes, it won't be a surprise that it came, but it will be a surprise when it came and how quickly.
WRT electric power, the key is that electricty isn't an energy source. It's a medium for transmitting energy. The great benefit of this is that it can come from many sources and put to many uses. It's helpful to "assume" a replacement for coal fired plants, because while we know no such replacement exists yet, there is no reason in physics why such a thing could not be. In fact, there may be no single satisfactory replacment for coal. As there may be no single satisfactory replacement for petroleum either. If that is the case, electricity is going to be a key part of the strategy for dealing with that. Even if we were to put in hydrogen pipelines to everybody's house, it doesn't fundamentally change things. Hydrogen is a method of storing and transmitting energy.
However, there are plenty of hurdles which must be overcome when talking about electric cars...and it's important to recgonize that the electric car is no panacea for our environmental/political/economic ills
Yes, but I'm deeply suspicious of the phrase "no panacea", because it's often trotted out in a way that suggests that if some form of progress doesn't solve all our problems, it is worthless.
This bears on your point of net environmental effects. What we need is a rational framework to think about them. But it's harder than it sounds. I once worked for an organization trying to help universities teach this. "Systems" thinking really isn't anything special. It's just broadening the scope of your reasoning to include effects you hadn't considered or intended. When you do this you tend to find that nothing is as good as you might hope, but on the other side few things are as bad as you might fear.
People point out the fact that electric cars just shift emissions from tailpipes to distant smokestacks. This is true. But it's not a conclusive argument. You have to crunch the numbers. And even after you've done that, you don't have the entire story. the importance of the electric car is that it creates options. It has been remarked that the definition of a bad policy is that it leaves you with no good options. It seems to me a good policy is one that leaves open many options. That is why electricity is so important; it is the most versatile and adaptable medium we have.
I agree that biodiesel is an intriguing option. It is, in effect, a method of storing and transmitting solar energy. The carbon molecules are recycled. But I'm not prepared to pin all our hopes on it.
A key point to remember is that scale is a big part of assessiong enviornmental impact. The second gigawatt of tidal power
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Exploding Batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exploding Dells, fires on planes, and soon at an intersection near you... cars venting more flame than the batmobile.
Re:Exploding Batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Exploding Batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
The match going out comment in more usually attributed to Diesel fuels, Kerosene and paraffin, which have a much higher flash point, and a higher boiling point. This means there is little vapor above the liquid and they are not likely to be ignited by a lighted match. It usually requires a wick to make fuel Oils burn e.g. a rag etc. or alternatively high temp and pressure such as in a diesel engine or gas turbine.
So please be careful!
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Re:Exploding Batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
At normal temperatures, gasoline has a vapour pressure sufficient that there will be a flammable vapour above any standing liquid gasoline. The flashpoint of gasoline is -40 (that's minus forty) degrees; at any temperature above that there can be sufficient vapour present to ignite and explode.
Under some conditions (for example, a confined container with a narrow neck and little air circulation) you might get the gasoline vapour to displace enough oxygen that it won't be able to burn. The upper explosive limit for gasoline is about 8%; above that level combustion will cease rapidly because the available oxygen will be depleted.
If you really insist on doing a drop-a-match-in-the-fuel experiment, use diesel fuel. The flashpoint of diesel is a little bit more than 60 degrees Celsius (about 140 F) and so won't form a flammable vapour mixture in air unless you're storing it really warm.
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Re:Exploding Batteries? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Exploding Batteries? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/07/ altair_batterie.html [typepad.com]
I mean based on the stuff I've read about the founders of the company and a lot of the people who have invested in it (i.e. Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, etc.) I feel I'll wait and see before passing any judgement.Parent
where are the flying pieces of cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though, Li-ion? I shudder to think of how those will get disposed of, eventually.
Re:where are the flying pieces of cars? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, probably the same way you dispose of alkaline batteries. You throw them in the trash. Lithium-Ion batteries are classified as "non-hazardous waste and are safe for disposal in the normal municipal waste stream."
Or punture and flood with saltwater if you're paranoid.
"Discharge: with the cell or battery pack in a safe area, connect a moderate resistance across the terminals until the cell or battery pack is discharged. CAUTION: the cell or battery pack may be hot! Discard: puncture plastic envelope, immerse in salt water for several hours and place in regular trash."
Li-Ion and Li-Poly batteries are a non-problem if they're discharged, and they are environmentally friendly, to boot.
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The time is right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The time is right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now that's a car (Score:4, Funny)
Now THAT's a car that'll hit the market with a bang! Not only do you have the instant response of electric motors and full torque from a dead stop, but you will also get rocket assist when you put a heavy load on the Li-ion batteries!
Over 6,831 batteries? (Score:5, Funny)
The batteries have to be in series/parallel banks (Score:5, Insightful)
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Solve the Battery Problem = Die Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Li-Ion batteries have excellent amp-hour ratings for their size, but like all other batteries are still pretty limited.
Acceleration/Torque for electric cars is not a problem. High performance capabilities are there if you want them. However, you are playing battery energy against performance against distance, and all electrics, or fuel-electric hybrids have been designed to be "green" in their approach. (Any Hummer oweners want an environmentally aware vehicle?)
Right now the weakest link in many electronic systems is the energy source. A good solution there and you can be a very wealty person.
Re:Solve the Battery Problem = Die Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
- enough batteries for ~50 miles.
- a small (100cc) biodiesel engine running at a fixed and preset RPM connected to a small generator. The engine would be set to run at the peak of it's power curve.
- a small ~10L fuel tank.
- an AC charging circuit
This would allow the driver to run on electric most of the day and charge on the road when needed. One could also use a gasoline engine instead of biodiesel and still see big fuel operating savings since some wall recharging would take place. It would also greatly decrease the number of batteries needed.
This is a really old idea. I saw something like this (on a much larger scale) on an USCG cutter (WLB-389) that was built in 1943. Two diesels -> two generators -> one electric motor. Worked great and it could double as a light ship [uscg.mil].
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80K?+batteries once a year (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is to say we are still in the same world, in which low volumes and other issues cause electric cars to be 50%-100$ higher than traditional cars. All that seems to have happened here is that an electric car has been targeted to the high end market and priced accordingly. It is kind of like taking the hummer, putting a cheap truck base on it, calling it an H2, and pretending that it still has the dubious value of the original.
Oh well, I suppose if they can build a sedan for 35K I would be impressed. We would also have to look at maintenance cost of the vehicle, which would be dominated by the battery replacement. A sports car car easily run 20 cents/mile in maintenance. Knowing that laptop batteries can only handle a couple hundred charge cycles, one can image where the long term maintenance cost could approach three or four time that amount.
I wish we had electric cars. I think the technology is there, and the pricing could be reasonable. But even companies that could be using the electric car to revive themselves, for instance Mazda and Ford, still seem to be married to the antiquated internal combustion engine.
Re:80K?+batteries once a year (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, you are correct in saying that auto companies are married to the internal combustion engine. Right now, they have to be. Americans expect their cars to be capable of certain things, and those expectations influence what they buy. Right now, electric cars (and hydrogen vehicles like the hydrogen RX-8) do not have the combination of capability and price to be mass-market vehicles. Until they reach that sweet spot, they will be nothing more than niche products. The research and investment shouldn't be stopped because of this, though. The best niche products have ways of becoming mainstream, and even if the Tesla roadster never makes it big, the accomplishment and lessons learned will have an impact on automobile technology before too long.
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Problem: recharging (Score:4, Interesting)
Batteries suck. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you could design a clever little nozzle to get a boost from your on-fire battery packs. That'd be AWESOME.
Wrong Name for Car (Score:5, Informative)
If it were, it would have no batteries at all. Instead it would gets it energy from some kind of wireless source like microwave power transmission [wikipedia.org] or even the Earth's magnetic field. [evworld.com]
Re:Pricy, but.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fuel economy could be better though. 35 MPG isn't much better than many cars.
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Re:Recharging time? (Score:5, Funny)
Easy... just plug the car's charger into the cigarette lighter and charge as you go!
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Re:Umm... (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw we buy one and part it out on ebay...
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Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Even with transmission losses, and losses due to charging and discharging, I bet this thing is considerably more efficient than a gasoline engine. What gasolene has as an advantage is that it's not so heavy with respect to the amount of power it has. And that batteries are expensive, have a very limited life span and possibly an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. There was a guy on Science Friday that suggested that we could convert to methanol use, it's easy to make from oil, it's easy to make from biomass, easy to haul and so on.
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Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, he has. And for his trouble, the remaining members of Greenpeace shrilly scream that he's a traitor and shill for the oil industry, etc, blah blah.
The real problem is that the people who oppose nukes are bound together more by their general political loopiness than they are by actual, real, rational environmental/energy issues. So when they see one of their own taking up a different messages, they excommunicate them idealogically - never mind the practical issues at hand.
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Re:Lithium-Ion? (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I dislike NiMH due to their rapid self-discharge rate, they look like a safer bet for automobiles.
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Re:Electric Cost Per Mile is Cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh
Don't be ridiculous. Electric cars have enough problems without inventing inane ones for them.
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Re:Electric Cost Per Mile is Cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
So I don't foresee lithium being a long-term cost effective material for energy storage in our transportaion system.
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Re:Electric Cost Per Mile is Cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
howie
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Re:Electric Cost Per Mile is Cheaper (Score:5, Informative)
I was going to mod you insightful, but then I realized that some may not realize why.
They are not using laptop batteries, as you said, but instead using batteries that use lithium cells. They say they are the same cells, but they probably actually mean that they are the same kind of cells used in laptop batteries.
Anyhow, good call. I'm hoping others will read my post and rate yours insightful.
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Re:Electric Cost Per Mile is Cheaper (Score:5, Informative)
a "cell" is the fundimental unit of a battery. A "D" battery contains one cell -- and indeed, in old books was just called a "D cell" and never a "D battery". The "cell" is the fundimental battery unit because of chemistry.
A "battery" contains a bunch of cells. The actual word "battery" means "a bunch of identical things" -- so that a bunch of cannon all grouped together (for example) is a "battery" -- hence the existance of "Battery Park" in New York.
Thanks to the average person's inability to keep these concepts seperate (and the lack of a reason why they should be seperate), "battery" is now used to mean either a battery in the old-fashioned sense OR a cell in the old fashioned sense (but only if the cell is, as it were, individually wrapped). Once again crystal clear tech language is subverted. (Note to self: don't go on a wild tangent about dumb terminals)
The "battery" in your laptop contains a bunch of cells -- I see from Google that at least some laptops use batteries of 12 cells. The "batteries" in the Tesla contains exactly one cell and would be better termed "cells", except that (per above) language is changing.
A big chunk of the cost of buying batteries for your laptop are:
1. You aren't buying in bulk. Bulk is lots cheaper.
2. You are also buying specialized circuitry that inside of the
3. Expensive plastic
I would expect that your 90%-off-in-bulk isn't high enough. Add in another by-twelve factor, and the price-per-year drops even more.
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Re:Range (Score:5, Interesting)
That's gotta be the simplest thing to resolve. Bung a subwoofer in the vehicle somewhere and a bunch of little speakers and before you set off decide what you want your car to sound like. I think I'll drive a Cobra today. Lovely.
Even more fun than downloading ringtones to your 'phone, downloading car sounds. It could be made to sound like anything!
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Re:Forget batteries, go with Ethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
But: you get hydrogen very inefficiently through the use of enormous amounts of electricity, which is currently being produced mostly through burning coal. Start using hydrogen in your car, you'll start burning that much more coal and natural gas at the electric plants. Your plug-in hybrids introduce the same problem.
They only viable solution is more nuclear power plants. A LOT more.
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