Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating Tesla's Battery Technology? (bloomberg.com) 266
"Tesla's newest promises break the laws of batteries," writes Bloomberg. Long-time Slashdot reader rudy_wayne summarizes their report.
"Elon Musk knows how to make promises. Even by his own standards, the promises made last week while introducing two new Tesla vehicles...are monuments of envelope pushing. To deliver, according to close observers of battery technology, Tesla would have to far exceed what is currently thought possible." The Tesla Semi, which Musk claims can haul 80,000 pounds at highway speeds for 500 miles, then recharge 400 miles of range in 30 minutes, would require "a charging system that's 10 times more powerful than one of the fastest battery-charging networks on the road today -- Tesla's own Superchargers."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
No surprise at all - it's about the stock price. (Score:3, Interesting)
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It's a new company, with new capital investment, if Tesla declared any profits and paid taxes on them, the accountants in charge deserve to be beaten to death with the tax code books. People who buy Tesla stock need to know fundamentals because it is a new company. The tax deductible depreciations on new buildings, plant and equipment are massive as is research, design and development. It would doubt they would generate any taxable profit for about a decade and them either major expansion or tax bills woul
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"It's a new company, with new capital investment, if Tesla declared any profits and paid taxes on them, the accountants in charge deserve to be beaten to death with the tax code books. People who buy Tesla stock need to know fundamentals because it is a new company"
The problem is they're burning huge amount of cash relative to sales and in one of the most cash-intensive & regulated businesses in the world. The bleeding can't go on much longer and their liabilities are adding up quickly. Not making money
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If Musk were trying to keep the Tesla stock price high, he could've achieved that more easily by simply not recently going on record telling the media that he thinks Tesla stock is currently overpriced: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/1... [cnbc.com]
The fact that you think a guy who shouts to the media that his stock is overvalued is putting on a PT Barnum act to raise the stock price shows that you've drifted off hopelessly into conspiracy land.
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In the past 8 years Tesla gross revenue has increased by a factor of 400. This is not a software business they can just make new cars appear out of thin air with a license key. They have to add factory space, but tools, hire tons of people and of course, buy a lot more parts and raw materials to make more cars.
Expanding a business like Tesla is a HUGELY capital intensive prospect. It's going to be a money loser until they grow to a size where growth starts to flatten out and scale starts to dominate.
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Yeah, it's pretty insane. Our Thanksgiving dinner of technologists, financiers, accountants, and lawyers figured he has a 1%-2% chance of success without giant government subsidies. We also estimated it wasn't a good idea to short the stock: there's too much idiot money out there.
He keeps missing his own production targets, he has big negative cashflow, his tooling plan for mass market cars is bizarre to the point of crazy.
He should just call his next car the "DeLorean, Mark II." It's cool, fast, uses high
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Name another car maker who is conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in.
Healthy environment" [cnbc.com] You say? I'm not saying that they don't, but I don't think that is their ultimate goal
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VW had an electric version of the MK1 Golf, the Rabbit in the early 80s which was an electric car. Peugeot had an electric 206 a decade before Tesla brought out their car.
How many of them were being manufactured back then? I mean, as long as your production is 99,9% ICE cars, you can hardly be called "conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in". Get that dirty shit out of at least cities and then we can talk about it.
Re: No surprise at all - it's about the stock pric (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: No surprise at all - it's about the stock pri (Score:5, Informative)
EVs are cleaner than fossil fuel vehicles even in parts of the grid where coal dominates. [acs.org]
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Your argument is tantamount to saying basically "Why bother shitting in the toilet? It doesn't change the amount of shit. We might as well just shit on the living room couch, on dinner table, and in fact wherever we happen to be at that moment. We might as well just shit everywhere because that's easier."
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That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture.
Toyota is driving innovation - worried about Li battery storage density, charge rates, and lifetime, the
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I don't totally disagree with this, but in fairness you should know the Japanese government very heavily subsidized research at both Toyota and Honda into hybrid engines.
With that said, it was clearly n wise economic exercise.
Re: No surprise at all - it's about the stock pric (Score:5, Informative)
"The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla"
Fuck, how did you manage to stuff so much wrong info into so few words? The Prius first went on sale in Japan in 1997 and internationally in 2000; Eberhard & Tarpenning founded Tesla in July 2003 with Musk becoming Chairman in April 2004 & helping to securing financing while also investing millions of his own money.
"That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture"
Sure but that Prius tech did fuck all to get anyone excited about EVs or to goad the industry to get off their asses & build electric vehicles that people covet. Those lines are only profitable because Toyota already have profitable cars to offset the losses of the early years. It took them 5 years to get to ~120k sold in the USA which Tesla surpassed in roughly the same amount of time - for a car that cost THREE to FIVE times as much.
Hell, the electric underpinnings barely changed for 10 years, the battery remained the same size & power for about as long and it took a dozen years for them to figure out a larger battery and that it might be a good idea to attach a power cord.
Japanese models.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Had both a power cord *AND* an electric only operation mode.
Both those features were removed for USDM models because the Japanese (rightly!) thought Americans were idiots and did their part to idiotproof the vehicles in order to ensure people didn't constantly run the batteries down too low, and because the charger required a dedicated breaker to avoid tripping. I forget it if was 110 or 220 and what current, but it WAS an available option/standard for JDM vehicles.
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Thanks for the info
Re: No surprise at all - it's about the stock pric (Score:4, Insightful)
Name another car maker who is conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in.
The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla, let alone decided to get involved in funding them.
A huuuge red herring on your part. It seems that you couldn't plug a Prius in and recharge it before 2010, so Priuses before that had to choke citizens with their generator exhaust before that year.
Toyota is driving innovation - worried about Li battery storage density, charge rates, and lifetime, they've started down the path of H2 fuel cell cars, but also maintaining their Li battery development.
So they still keep getting distracted by building a separate infrastructure for small-scale hydrogen consumers? Then they don't really seem to be conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in, again.
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That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture.
I know the "Musk is only successful because of subsidies" meme is popular around here but you know that Prius buyers took advantage of tax credits too, right? It's not like Tesla is the only company to "suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture". Toyota gladly accepts subsidies just like all the other car manufacturers. The only place Tesla is unique is that their entire line is eligible for the tax credit instead of a subset like the other manufacturers.
Nissan has made twice as many electrics (Score:2)
Nissan has made twice as many fully electric cars as Tesla has.
Renault and partners have made more than Tesla, I think.
BYD has probably made a LOT more than Tesla has, but exact numbers are hard to come by.
Re:No surprise at all - it's about the stock price (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they did have a working prototype doing max acceleration 0-70 mph runs all night long without recharging. The numbers they quoted appeared to be real numbers for that prototype.
Unlike Porsche and others who display a stationary model and claim that it will be able to almost match the performance of current production Teslas, some day, when they actually manage to make it work.
I think Tesla did figure out something new, aren't quite able to mass produce it yet, but already did make it in very small volume and are now testing it. They may not make the 2020 deadline (it's still Tesla, after all) but I doubt it will be much later than that. They are getting a lot better at actually producing things, delays on Model 3 are only a couple of months and that's after accelerating the development by a whole year. I expect them to deliver the first token roadsters in december 2020 and start producing them for real in the second half of 2021.
Other car manufacturers (Score:2)
Generally Porsche tends to be very conservative (read - underestimate) with their numbers. Porsche already has a release date for their Mission-E car - end on 2019, and multiple test-mules have been photographed./recorded running around the 'ring.
15 minute charge to 80% is pretty good,
Re: No surprise at all - it's about the stock pric (Score:2)
Easy answer. (Score:4, Funny)
Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating
Yes.
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You mean Elon isn't going to take me to Mars for $199.98?
I am shocked ... shocked ...
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Boeing's first commercial jetliner was the 707 which first flew at the end of 1957. However, the first commercial jet was the deHavilland Comet which first flew almost a decade before the 707. Unfortunately, the Comet had a few minor design flaws which resulted in it tending to come apart in flight resulting in a bit of negative publicity. It was extensively redesigned. Some of the redesigned aircraft were in service until very recently. The original Comet didn't carry a lot of passengers -- about 40 a
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Fuel consumption per passenger, however, has changed a great deal since the early Comet days.
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FTFY
Build electrified lanes... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trying to recharge vehicle batteries wirelessly like a huge Qi charger is even more lossy. The inefficiencies would kill any such plan.
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Rail is just much more efficient than rubber tyres on tarmac for moving heavy loads. What we really need is a system that efficiently moves stuff between hubs via rail and then transfers contains onto trucks for local delivery. The problem in the past has always been the speed and cost of loading/unloading, but it seems like these days a robot could do it pretty efficiently.
Of course we destroyed a lot of the rail infrastructure that could have been used for this so it would need to be rebuilt now.
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They have these retractable rail bogeys for railroad maintenance vehicles that let pickups and larger trucks actually drive on the train tracks.
I'm curious if they could do the same thing for semi-truck trailers and make them into rail cars. It would probably make the most sense if the rail wheels were somehow part of the existing trailer suspension, but I don't know how well that would play with the existing trailer wheel spacing and of course you would need to do something for front bogeys where semi-tra
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The short answer is that we load whole trailers with their wheels on them onto trains because it makes more sense than trying to create a new lightweight ISO container standard that will only be used on the backs of pickup trucks.
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Re:Build electrified lanes... (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact there are several trolleybus lines in Murmansk. That is more to the north than Fairbanks.
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They work quite well in Vancouver.
"Laws of battery technology" (Score:5, Informative)
With a title like that, you know the article is going to be good for a laugh. Sort of like people who say "physics says..." who wouldn't even recognize the formulae that apply to the problem in question if you wrote them out in front of them.
1) Passengers in the Roadster noted how high its floor is. Aka: it's a double-high pack. Tesla already makes 100kWh packs for the S and X that are single-high. They may need to extend a bit further forward and back because the Roadster is a bit smaller of a footprint (on S and X they only slightly overlap the wheelbase, and on Model 3 they're inside the wheelbase entirely), but there's nothing at all implausible about 200kWh in such a form factor.
2) The megacharger charge port has been filmed by KMan [youtube.com]. It has 8 giant pins in what appear to be a 2x4 arrangement, with ground and control pins likely clustered in a side slot on the right. These pins are much larger than those on the supercharger port, and there's a lot more of them. Also note the 2x4 arrangement: there appear to be four separate battery packs, and there 4 separate drive units. It appears that bloody everything on this vehicle is redundant (one assumes that there's at least a charge balancing system between the packs).
3) The means to provide the power to the megachargers is very, very simple: they're battery buffered. Tesla has always been clear on this; they're not drawing that power straight from the grid. More to the point, Semi uses the same battery chemistry as Tesla's grid-battery buffers (NMC). It's an extremely durable chemistry.
4) The article is very reasonable in its assessment of the battery capacity on the 500mi semi - they say 600-1000kWh (I've been working on the assumption of 900kWh, but it could be a bit less). Their estimate on the price, however, assumes that batteries cost $100-$170/kWh retail. Yet the raw material costs for said cells is only about $50/kWh - and that's currently at "spiked" prices which can be expected to drop as the mining industry readjusts to the new demand curve (historic prices would be more like $35/kWh). The whole point of the Gigafactory was to make li-ion batteries - finally - get closer to the cost of the raw materials that go into them. These numbers simply suggest that the Gigafactory has done exactly what it was designed to do.
5) Their estimate of the weight of the battery pack is probably correct (around 5 tonnes). However, in addition to the weight savings from using electric drive units vs. a big diesel / transmission / pollution controls / etc, Tesla always builds light. Don't expect the primary structure to be made of mild steel on this one; expect UHS steel, with 4-5 times the tensile strength, for example. Guillen stated in Europe that it has the same payload capacity as a diesel semi (aka, the tractor is no heavier), and that's probably correct.
Or, to put it another way: none of the "experts" expected the Model 3 SR to come in at almost exactly the same weight as the BMW 330i, with the same performance, more standard features, and a cheaper price. It did. And the LR isn't much heavier than a 330i, and well faster (can't wait to see the specs on the performance package!)
6) Charge rates of 7 cents per kWh: First off, their estimate that charging should cost 40 cents per kWh is just absurd. Pure nonsense. Even Tesla's current generation of superchargers is half that ($0,20/kWh), and they have to pay demand charges. That said, 7 cents per kWh comes across as extremely ambitious... until you start looking into it [slashdot.org]. And then you realize how much of a game changer it is that Tesla is doing here.
Re:"Laws of battery technology" (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, one more thing: expect to see things get more impressive with time. For example: a lot of people are expecting the handling to be poor on the Roadster because the battery pack will weigh slightly over a tonne (at current cell energy densities). Sure, Tesla will be going all out to make the rest of the car light, but still, that's a lot of weight underneath you, right?
But there's one thing people are forgetting: torque steering. The rear wheels are each driven by separate motors, each hooked up to wheels with very sticky tires. You can have one side going full thrust forward and the other side going full thrust in reverse if you wanted. You could make the car pirouette in place if you wanted. Computer controlled J turns, precise drift control, etc? They're only limited by their programming; there's a lot more potential here than you can achieve with just differential braking.
And we already know that Tesla is working heavily on torque steering; this isn't something that's going to come as a surprise to them. Torque steering is the principle behind the anti-jackknifing approach on Semi.
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Re:"Laws of battery technology" (Score:4, Insightful)
"Pretty standard"? In what world do you live where 325/30ZR21 tires are "pretty standard"? That's 325 millimeters wide - that's over a foot wide.
In what world do you live where Roadster 1 had torque steering?
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If he's not talking about torque steering, then he's invoking a red herring, since Roadster 2 will have torque steering.
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Can Tesla just import the power? We (Quebec) exports dozens of TWh per year at prices substantially below 7 US cents per kilowatt hour. Is there any reason why Tesla can't just make a deal with Hydro Quebec to import power to the Eastern interconnect and pay the US utilities for transport?
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It's certainly possible. But the big thing going on here is that solar and wind power have gotten super cheap.... with the caveat that you have to also pay for an expensive battery buffer or peaking plant to go with them. But here, A) Tesla has clearly gotten battery prices way down, and B) the stations need a battery buffer either way; it's a two-for-one.
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1) No,it's not cheaper than a decked out Model X. A decked-out Model X with all the bells and whistles is $147k, cheaper than the short-range Semi.
2) You're comparing the price of a vehicle in the future with a vehicle today, in a field whose prices keep falling.
3) Model X is two generations and two platforms old, with a lot of manual labour. And probably one of the most complicated vehicles ever built on top of that. It also does 0-60 in 2,9 seconds.
4) The larger you make something, the better the better
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Did you actually read the linked comment? Doesn't seem like you did.
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A vehicle is not just its fuel. Even a powertrain is not just its fuel. You have tankage, engines, transmissions, pollution controls, and a whole range of associatied hardware systems that are vastly heavier than the fuel itself. You can see it play out in the Model 3: the Model 3 SR is pretty much the same weight as a BMW 330i, which it's about the same size and acceleration as. The Model 3 LR is in turn only about 100 pounds heavier than the BMW 340i (same weight when the BMW's tank is full) and likewi
Betteridge (Score:2)
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
So maybe it's Betteridge after all.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of immediately accusing them of witchcraft, perhaps... they just figured out a way to bundle multiple 'standard' standard car-chargers in parallel, and use those to charge separate battery packs inside a semi, greatly reducing the total recharge time?
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The city power side can do is well understood, the truck should just be a lot more well understood battery packs ready to recharge in a set time.
Like the TARDIS (Score:5, Funny)
It's bigger on the inside.
Solid-state lithium batteries. (Score:2)
From the specs, it looks like these two vehicles use solid-state lithium batteries, which are also being put into some other high-end EVs currently in development. Next question.
Can be done with what they have today (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm betting the eight "pins" on the port aren't pins. They are sockets with two contact surfaces.
Eight 120 kWH batteries (five in the 300-mile version) made using the newer 2170 cells wouldn't be much of a stretch of the current technology. This would provide 960 kWH total which is within the range of estimated needs.
Tesla reuses the same AC/DC converter in their superchargers that they use in their vehicles. Current superchargers use 12 of these 11kW AC/DC modules to provide about 130kW (after losses).
If you go with the same theme but update it to use 12 of the 20kW AC/DC modules now used in the model S, the existing supercharger design could be trivially increased to about 216kW after losses.
Eight 216kW superchargers operating simultaneously could deliver 1,728kW - more than enough to provide a 400-mile charge in 30 minutes.
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A company whose business is selling electricity, going to love the chance to sell more electricity? You better believe it.
Past behavior. (Score:4, Insightful)
The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Has Elon Musk greatly exaggerated Tesla's battery technology in the past? From what I've read, Elon Musk has always ended up providing what he claimed albeit a bit behind schedule and over budget. However, once the baseline product is established it seems to improve over time. Jaffe's conclusion that this are factors he is unaware of is a logical one.
Nobody cares about that. (Score:2)
"But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car."
Why? A Bugatti Veyron at full speed empties its 100 liter gas tank in 8 minutes.
New Battery Technology from John Goodenough (Score:2)
"Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating..." (Score:2)
But can Tesla manufacture enough batteries (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Seems feasible (Score:5, Informative)
NMC li-ion, likely 2170 form factor, 4x packs. Hard to estimate the number of bricks (because we don't know the voltage) and thus the number of cells per brick.
The charge times are perfectly normal for Tesla cells. 30 minutes to 80% is the standard for supercharging as well. It's just more cells and more power.
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One port per truck. The battery pack couldn't handle more power anyway.
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Have you looked at the new plug for the trucks? Pretty heavy duty.
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That's kind of surprising, really. Most diesel trucks have two tanks with separate fillers, precisely because there's no other way to get enough fuel into them quickly enough. Having a power port on each side would reduce the amount of current draw through that cable, which would probably simplify... well, everything.
Maybe they'll do that five years from now when they decide to add a long-haul version. :-)
Re: Seems feasible (Score:3)
Or they could put both ports on the same side of the truck, for convenience; and having done that they could bind the two cables together so they both plug in at once; and having done that they could just make look like a single, larger cable, with a single, larger port, and here we are.
Re:Seems feasible (Score:4, Informative)
They're going to be giant truck stops, covered, with solar panels and wind turbines. The same batteries buffer the power generation as buffer the high speed charging, so two for one.
They can just run all the charging, and lease out the retail part to the current truck stop service companies.
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"They're going to be giant truck stops, covered, with solar panels and wind turbines. The same batteries buffer the power generation as buffer the high speed charging, so two for one"
Wind turbines? Highly doubtful; that'll get the local up in arms. And it'll take a lot of solar to provide power for even 1 or 2 trucks. The MegaChargers will need grid connections which isn't a bad thing as Tesla could potentially use the supporting PowerPacks to provide grid services which will bring in more revenue at signif
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Hope you don't pull into a supercharger station just after a truck pulled in - and plugged in all the chargers.
No. Because Ohm's Law.
No matter how much current capacity that's sitting there on the lines waiting to flow, the batteries will only take so much and cease drawing current as the resistance rises with the increase in total charge percentage, causing less current to flow. It's the same reason your phone charger (and phone) that only requires a fraction of an amp doesn't go up in flames when plugged into a 15-20-amp AC power outlet.
Not to mention, there's also a crap-ton of high-current regulation circuitry i
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This. Just reading the summary told me this is almost certainly it. No great stretch of the imagination required here.
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Been wondering about those cables myself. I've actually moved, connected, and disconnected some high power cables at times. A fair task for an adult male. Muskmobile cables carrying ten times the power are likely to be a challenge to deal with.
Re: Seems feasible (Score:2)
I do know that some Superchargers today have liquid cooling in the cables to keep them thinner. Thatâ(TM)s likely for these mega chargers.
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When/if you realize how stupid you are being, you will apologize. I'm not expecting it. Thinking clearly isn't your strong suit.
To get you started:
Energy = Power * Time
Power = Amps * Volts
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It will be interesting to see what they design. I suspect they haven't fully done that yet, and could run in to challenges.
Re: Seems feasible (Score:2)
Diesel trucks frequently refuel using two pumps simultaneously (one pump for the curbside tank and one for the roadside tank). Thereâ(TM)s no reason Teslaâ(TM)s filling stations couldnâ(TM)t be similar: have 2, 3, 4 simultaneous plug-ins.
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Did you know he even hired some real engineers for the project?!
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"They've already had to deal with this very problem before."
Ahem, no. Keep the charge time the same and multiply the amount of power by 10 or 20. They've had to deal with maybe 5-10% of the problem. Maybe their previous solutions scale. Maybe they don't.
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When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Free (very) hot showers for the drivers!!!
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Meanwhile, spyshots and the VIN count on Model 3 show production greatly accelerating.
As for "exaggerating everything" - you mean like promising a battery within 100 days of signing a contract, and delivering it in 55? Promising the Model 3 with 215 mile range, then delivering it with 220, with an option for 310 - a number that's in turn downrated from EPA testing of 334 miles? What exaggerations about vehicle stats and pricing are you thinking of exactly?
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
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OTOH, he constantly delivers on the tech and in the right price range.
So, I prefer a guy that produces an EV sedan for 65K on up, and an EV X-over for 70K that is outdoing all of its direct competitors, and now produces an EV sedan for 35K that is worth 35K, vs competitors that produce an EV that sells for 40K and is worth less than 25K.
Re: Yes. (Score:2)
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Nor was that ever part of the schedule. Are you really building your argument on something that will be invalidated a few months from now?
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We were talking about claims of vehicle stats and pricing.
No, that is what you want to discuss. The original claim was:
Elon Musk exaggerates everything in his advantage. It would be highly unusual if he didn't exaggerate a claim in an announcement made to destract from the problems with the Tesla 3.
You responded with media copy details crafted ex post facto.
See there is this shell game going on to misdirect investors and you have become so accustomed to that norm you have started participating yourself!
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July 2017, Musk stated they would make 20K of the Model 3s in December. In October, he stated that they would hit 20K units per month by March 2018 at the earliest.
As far as technology, how about their "autopilot"? Not as functional as many other offerings on the market, and doesn't even see motorcycles [revzilla.com], meaning its a hazard to fellow users of the road. Big tech fail there... And we won't even get into the doors of the Model X...
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Vin numbers are no indication of actual production.
Its an indication of the productivity of the guy who registers VIN numbers. That guy is killing it!
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Not talking about VIN *registrations*. I'm talking about VINs *spotted on vehicles*.
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By the way: they finally broke the 1100 barrier (1131 was spotted today). This is interesting because the VINs had slowly ticked up to the lower 500s, then seemed to stop... then suddenly jumped just a couple weeks ago to near 1100, and then had ticked down since then toward the previous high mark. The fact that they're now over 1100 strongly suggests that they've filled in the VIN gap.
Looks like they're up to something like 150 per week right now (and accelerating), which is a huge improvement over where
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10k nm wheel torque.
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Assuming it was like HP and made any difference where you measured it, which it doesn't, wheel torque would make it even more of an exaggeration
Re:10k nm. (Score:4, Informative)
No, idiot.
Wheel torque = engine torque multiplied by overall drive ratio (minus losses). Since the overall drive ratio is typically between 3 and 5 in top gear (and much higher in lower gears), wheel torques are going to be at least 3 times engine torque and possibly more than 20x engine torque (in low gear).
That makes it much more comparable, and not an exaggeration.
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The unreferenced Wikipedia page is wrong. They forgot about the gear ratio between the wheels and engines. Gearing trades RPM for torque. See a discussion here [physicsforums.com].
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Derd! Hey derd.
The types of electric motors used in EVs have constant torque vs RPMs. They don't have a power curve, they have a power line. This fact is broadly true across three phase electric motors.
Also: Mechanical advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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>> The types of electric motors used in EVs have constant torque vs RPMs
Not even close.
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Even without the ~10:1 gearbox the wheel acts as a gear too.
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Diesel Locomotive (starting) 9515 ft lbs, and side note with these, they use electric motors (with diesel generators to create the electricity)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't understand your post.
Re: (Score:3)
1) Li-ion batteries don't "explode". If you screw up, they can catch fire, but that's not the same thing.
2) Tesla battery packs have individual cells physically isolated and surrounded by non-flammable coolant.