Tesla Roadster reaches the end of the line | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Roadster reaches the end of the line

money.cnn.com

113 pointsjkuria94 comments

$58,0000 for 160 mile range, $80,000 for extra batteries to bring it up to 300 mile range, which is $22,000 more. The extra weight of the batteries reduces mileage slightly so the extra pack doubles the battery capacity. Now battery cost is the big problem, so the $22,000 pack is being sold at near cost. So a 300 mile range battery pack from 0 mile range is $44,000, this is the cost of the two packs. Batteries need to be replaced every 3-6 years depending on use, so figure $9000/yr battery cost for this machine, not including the $1000 or so fees for disposing of the toxic waste (lithium batteries are not accepted at the dump).

So yes, you save on gas driving this machine and save the environment by not emitting as many fumes. But it costs $9000 a year to maintain the batteries, which are a serious toxic waste disposal problem.

Not harping on Tesla here though, this is the basic problem with electric cars.

"Batteries need to be replaced every 3-6 years depending on use"

Please cite your source on this. AFAIK, the batteries in most electric cars are good for the life of the vehicle. They're designed to use only part of their capacity to extend life and then compensate as much as possible for loss of charge over time..

And they pay you to recycle lithium-ion batteries, and they aren't very toxic at all.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/mythbusters-part-3-recycling...

Ok, no problem. Please state the "life of the vehicle" that you mention in miles driven and years of ownership. Also state whether this figure is backed in a legally binding warranty on said batteries. Then we'll figure the cost of maintaining the batteries.

Also, to be fair, we should note that the tesla.com link you give is to a program they are hoping to implement in the future and which does not actually exist in real life. Also note that they themselves in the link which you yourself provided state "Aside from the cells, most components in our ESS are designed to last the life of the car." Note the "aside from the cells". The lithium cells are the main cost of the battery. Without them the car does not work. Tesla specifically states there that the cells are not designed to last the life of the vehicle, which you had claimed.

  the tesla.com link you give is to a program 
  they are hoping to implement in the future

That link is from 2008. At least in Europe, the program has been implemented:

http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-launch...

Thanks very much for that. So according to tesla's latest information at that link, the program doesn't actually pay money back as was claimed, but it also doesn't cost anything to dispose. It also states that 7 years or 160,000km (99,400 miles) is the expected typical life of the battery. 99,400/7 = 14,200 miles per year, expected usage, about 60 miles a day for 250 work days.

Haven't found the warranty information though which will tell us the real expected life for the Sedan. For the Roadsters, they come with a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty, but that does not include a battery replacement warranty, which is an additional purchase.

Musk stated in 2009 that a single battery pack replacement for the Roadster would cost $36,000 in 2009 dollars, but it seems to be something that wasn't actually available yet. (http://www.autoobserver.com/2009/02/tesla-battery-pack-repla...) There he also explains that the battery pseudo-warranty costs $12,000 extra. The inverse pro-rated pseudo-warranty is structured so that customers have to pay an additional fee if the battery fails before 7 years, and get a partial refund if they last more than 7 years.

What would an owner do at his car's end of life if Tesla has previously gone out of business?

The legacy of the Roadster won't be its practicality, it'll be that it divorced the terms "electric car" and "golf cart" in a way that something like the ZENN (or the old EVO) never could. If all it ever did was to keep people from thinking about zero-to-sixty times in weeks (downhill and with a following gale force wind), then the car has done its job. It's proven the concept well enough to generate some excitement around storage technologies -- and now we wait for the next generation. (Well, I do -- electrochemical research is not my forte.)

There's two ways to disrupt a market - starting at the top, and starting at the bottom. Electric cars can't disrupt from the bottom, because the regulatory burden is likely to be too high. Cut too many costs, and the car will be banned.

Starting at the top means that rich idiots who want to pretend to save the earth can buy it, and you can then look at moving down.

OK, there's electric motorbikes at the bottom, and three wheeled cars classed as motorbikes, but they will struggle to bridge the legislative gap between cars and motorbikes.

Why do they have to be idiots to buy it?

Anyone who buys a BMW or Porsche or any other car in that price range is looking at more than just the ability to get from point A to point B. The Tesla Roadster is plain fun to drive, and it is a conversation piece in the way $120,000 Porsche is not. I was at a racetrack recently where the Tesla Roadster was parked between a bunch cars worth far more money, but everyone was interested in the Tesla because it was unique.

Most of them are under no illusions that they are saving the planet, and most people realize it is not cheaper than buying another car. But it's a toy, I'm sure you have some hobby where you spend money on things for fun. That doesn't make you an idiot.

Fair enough. I think spending ~$100k on a car is stupid, but that may be biased by the fact that I can't afford to. And it's a lot less stupid than similar cars - lots of acceleration (I'm guessing), and it's a real eye catcher.

Nobody should be under any illusions that Teslas save money; they're trying to use the luxury "conspicuous conservation" market to fund enough R&D to get to the point where electric will be cheaper.

bugsy was talking about the Model S sedan, not the Roadster, which is a step in the direction you're talking about. His point, I believe, is that the economics of generation two still don't work if your intention is to save money.

I was also talking about the Model S. I think Tesla is thinking pretty long term; it may take them four or five generations to reach cost parity with gasoline (if ever).

  not including the $1000 or so fees for disposing 
  of the toxic waste (lithium batteries are not 
  accepted at the dump)

Not in the US, at least according to the info I can find:

  "Lithium Ion batteries are classified by the 
  federal government as non-hazardous waste and 
  are safe for disposal in the normal municipal 
  waste stream," says Kate Krebs at the National 
  Recycling Coalition.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/3285

Tesla also has a battery recycling program, but I'm not familiar with the specifics.

I'm pretty sure you save nothing by driving this car. Think about this:

1. Energy and materials for manufacturing the batteries

2. Energy for recycling the batteries

3. Energy to charge the batteries

4. Energy to mine the coal (most common fuel in the U.S.) to produce the electricity

5. Energy losses on the power lines, transformers, etc.

If you are after saving the environment, buy a used Geo instead. However, Tesla makes damn cool cars.

This is a really good point: if you are going to buy a car anyway, it might be better to buy an electric car (though I, personally, doubt it, and would love to see the actual environmental impact), but if you want to help the environment, buy a used car. Almost any used car will be better for the environment than the best new car.

That's true as far as it goes, but this gets very tricky to analyze, because if you don't buy the used car, someone else will. If you do buy it, what would the other buyer have done instead? (Bought a new car? Kept running their old car?)

Assuming it's not a gross polluter, keeping a car on the road longer than it would have been otherwise is probably a win, since that extends the average lifetime of the fleet and reduces demand for new cars. But that has more to do with good maintenance over the life of the car, rather than what transactions happened along the way.

I'm missing some point here. Isn't a new car more environment friendly?

I would think it depends on the new car and the old car and usage, but the idea is that a large amount of resources goes in to making a car so saving that initial outlay of resources by reusing an older car would more than cover the difference in fuel consumption.

..but the idea is that a large amount of resources goes in to making a car so saving that initial outlay of resources..

If so, then why work? Isn't that a waste of Energy, time and resources? We could simply live on like humans did thousands of years ago...

> If so, then why work?

Most people need to pay the bills. Room, board, that sort of thing.

> Isn't that a waste of Energy, time and resources?

Work for work's sake -- perhaps. If you rather receive something desirable in proportional exchange for your labor, then no.

> We could simply live on like humans did thousands of years ago...

Whaddya mean we? All 7 billion of us? Not a chance. 7 million, maybe. I, for one, am getting up at 8am tomorrow.

Not at all. It takes a lot of energy and materials to mine and process the raw materials to create a new car. You have to take into account the whole process, from building new mines, to creating sheet aluminum, to building the factories to put new cars together. The list goes on.

Electronic cars are about large scale infrastructure change.

There is the advantage that the pollution coming from this car is from fairly centralized sources. The power pollution is at the plant, not the tailpipe, and you're not building a car that inherently depends upon coal. It could run off any power source you can attach to the grid.

The battery pack stays with the car until you're in EOL mode for it, which can then likely be recycled reasonably.

Sure. However, in the US, no new nuclear power plants have been built since the 70s and no new ones are planned. Here, the relatively clean sources of electricity (nuclear and hydro) make up less than 20% of the total production [1]. And once again, the amount of energy that goes into the production of the batteries I bet far outweighs the energy used to drive the car for a few years (have not done the actual numbers). Yes, if we start adding cogeneration capabilities [2] to our coal-fired power plants, we may come out somewhat ahead. However, almost nobody does it currently, except small universities.

As for attaching solar panels to the roof of your house, you might break even assuming you get a full subsidy from your state and the panels outlast their expected lifetime. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source for more fun facts.

Fun fact: I once calculated that adding cogeneration to one average sized coal power plant would more than make up for all the energy spent making and recycling plastic grocery bags. There are thousands of these plants in the US.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration

Don't forget the environmentally destructive mining of rare earth metals in China.

Do you positively know that the Model S will use rare earth metals in its manufacturing process?

I'm asking this because the Tesla Roadster uses a three-phase electric motor (called an induction motor) that does not rely on permanent magnets. This leaves the decision to use rare earth metals as a purely optional one (like in, maybe use them for the chassis). I was under the impression that the Model S would be using the same type of electric motor, but I may be wrong.

Of course, we still must not forget the environmentally destructive mining of lithium, needed for the Li-Ion battery pack.

This sparked a thought experiment in my mind.

Let's assume that we are in an age where the grand majority has an electric car which is charged from home. Let's also assume that the electrical consumption of all other electrical devices (appliances, electronics, lights etc) stays constant.

What extra load will electric cars add to the power grid?

Would the extra power plants required to meet this extra load add up to a relatively equal waste output as today's cars?

e: grammar, clarity

From what I gather, currently you need to check with your utility company to see if they can deliver enough power to your home before installing a charging station. They are concerned about it, so I imagine they are not ready to charge any significant proportion of cars.

Yeah, the Roadster requires a 220V/70A charging system. I've owned a lot of homes and don't recall ever having seen beyond 220v/30A lines for electric dryers and stoves. A 70A line is definitely requiring a new service box for just about any residential set up. The Model S requires 440V service. No idea how that is going to work, I've never seen a house anywhere in the world with 440V AC service. For this you're going to need the electric company to set up a separate transformer on the pole just for your house.

But charging is mostly at night when there is an excess of capacity, so that is a good thing.

I hear people talking about using solar panels to charge these things. There is no solar service on any residential house that is going to be providing 220V 70A service for recharging these cars.

If those lithium-ion batteries are about as good as the batteries in laptops they should be good for about 300 to 500 cycles. After those 300 to 500 cycles laptop batteries are typically expected to retain between 80 and 70 percent of their charge.

That would be about 130,000km to 210,000km (assuming a linear decline in battery capacity – which might very well be wrong) with the 483km range battery.

That’s about 60km to 96km per day (and between 83km and 134km per day if the car is only used on weekdays, e.g. for commuting) if you want to get by with the battery for six years.

If you have 2 battery packs you would still have a longer range at 70% charge than a single battery pack roadster. Still let's call it ~100k miles. Assuming 30mpg and premium gas (this is a sports car) your saving ~4$ every 30 miles by using electricity or ~13.3k. Drop that to 15MPG and your saving ~28k which is about what one pack cost.

Lithium ion batteries, such as those in laptops, don't degrade based on charge/discharge cycles the way that older generations (NiCd, NiMH etc) did, but rather lose permanent capacity mostly as a function of time and temperature (although discharging below 20% or so exacerbates this).

9K/yr during first 3-6 years is in the range of typical depreciation for an 80K car

Assume:

  $4/gallon gasoline.
  45 miles per gallon for commuter car.
  The average driver in the US drives 15,000 miles/year.

Therefore:

  $9000 / $4 = 2250 gallons.
  2250 gallons * 45 mpg = 101250 miles
  101250 mi / 15000 mi = 6.75

You must drive the electric car 6.75 times further each year than the gasoline powered car for your battery costs to break even with gas costs.

If you are driving that much, you will wear out the batteries even faster than the norm causing the battery cost to be even higher.

Alternately, it's cheaper to drive a fuel-efficient gasoline car like a Volkswagon Jetta until gasoline gets up to $27/gallon.

You should compare it to something that's near its performance class, since people are obviously not going to buy the Model S just to save money. That's going to be a future model.

At under 5 seconds 0-60, the Model S sport is supposedly going to have performance in the 500 horsepower BMW M5 range, which gets a combined MPG of 13 (11 city, 17 highway).

Besides that, the M5 is more like $90k.

I agree with you that you are not exactly saving the environment by rollin on Lithium. Heck, you didn't even take into account the environmental damage of mining it in China, talk about an environmental disaster.

I think the point of Tesla is more to push the technology of electric cars forward, to a point where someday it reaches a critical mass, or proper economy of scale, to the point where it is efficient.

Also, I was strolling around Montreal the other weekend, and saw a Roadster at a red light. Me being the drunken asshole that I am yelled "yo tesla dude, gun it". And let me tell you what, that car takes off like a friggin rocket, but quiet as hell, all you hear is the tires begging for grip. I want one.

I've had my roadster (#16) for almost three years now.

It's the most exciting car driving experience I've ever had.

http://green.autoblog.com/photos/jason-calacanis-tesla-roads...

I've done over 10,000 miles and it is my daily driver (i'm four miles from my office). I drive about 20 miles a day.

The batter charge is the same as when I got it.

I'm serial #1 and #85 of the sedan. I sent two full deposits the day they announced the price.

The top Tesla engineer and the top designer walked me through the design, drawings and I've driven in the prototypes. Model S is AWESOME. It's got something like a 24" computer monitor flipped to it's side as the center console. It's got not engine so there is storage in the front and the back. It's UBER fast.... similar to the roadster in the prototype i drove in.

The model S will be the best car on the road--hands down--next summer.

Was the Roadster ready for prime time? No. It is a very raw proof point along the way to non-carbon based transportation.

The price is going to keep getting cut in half, and thanks to home solar plummeting in price, I'm predicting we're going to see many homes have one plug-in hybrid for long-range, one EV for daily driving and solar panels.

When gas hits $6-8 a gallon, and that will happen over the next five years, folks will really start embracing solar and EVs. Just like they embraced hybrids when gas hit $4-5 a gallon.

To think that 10 years from now the concept of smog clouds over Los Angeles and other cities will start to go away... is... just.... mind blowing.

(Not being snarky, serious question) - I do your three year milage every 20 weeks. Any idea how well the battery would hold up to that?

Also, what's the range if you hold it at a steady 110-120kph?

"Batteries need to be replaced every 3-6 years depending on use, so figure $9000/yr battery cost for this machine, not including the $1000 or so fees for disposing of the toxic waste (lithium batteries are not accepted at the dump)."

Batteries are going to be way more cheaper when you give the old battery, in fact as technology improves, they even can give you money if you replace the battery( when nano materials improve, you need way less lithium and other raw materials that will be more expensive as demand grows up).

"which are a serious toxic waste disposal problem."

You will be stupid if you throw them away "at the dump": (Those people extract lithium, watch the tendency)

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:SQM

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:FMC

Recycling batteries is very easy to do, compared to extracting it from the earth.

Something I've always wondered, and I bet someone else here has thought about it, is what happens if electric vehicles do become popular?

It seems to me that we would have a huge surge in electrical demand and that would make electricity more expensive. Could the electrical infrastructure even keep up? And wouldn't we just end up shifting where waste comes from (from Cars to power plants). And battery recycling would certainly become a very important thing.

One thing to bear in mind is that energy production is MUCH more efficient when done at scale (i.e. power plant) than having lots of little power plants (i.e. internal combustion engines).

There's still the issue of transporting the energy, but the waste/consumption to output ratio definitely favors generating power at large scale.

[edit: Another thought. I'm not sure about this and can't find a quick reference, but I would guess that scrubbing the emissions at a coal plant can be done more effectively than at the per-internal combustion engine level.]

> …scrubbing the emissions at a coal plant can be done more effectively than at the per-internal combustion engine level.

This is true, especially because you can put a fence around a coal plant, while you can't always put a fence around your catalytic converter to keep meth-heads from stealing it for the platinum[1].

1: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=catalytic+converter+meth-head

The hope is, on the utility side, that the introduction of "smart grid" and "smart metering" technology will help to introduce staggered scheduling of smart appliances and devices such that they do not add significantly to peak times.

For example, if your car has implemented the ZigBee Smart Energy Profile it will connect to your smart meter (HAN network) and will know to start charging only over night (or only if it absolutely has to) when the demand for electricity is far less and most likely cheaper - after the utility implements more levels of peak pricing. We're probably a decade away from such things.

My local utility already offers a tariff that includes three price levels, depending on the time of day.

If the cars are mostly charged overnight, it won't be a big deal. The biggest strain on the power grid and generation capacity comes in the late afternoon, when people's air conditioners are cranking at full blast. That's when the most expensive and dirtiest energy is generated (coal energy is great at ramping up to meet peaks in demand, and power companies will obviously keep their most expensive generators in reserve for peak loads). Adding more consumption at night is actually a great thing, because it lets power companies get more use out of the big capital expenditure on their power plants. Obviously this depends on people actually charging at night, but that can be handled through financial incentives.

And, of course, centralizing the generation of emissions can be a good thing in that you just need to upgrade a few generators to improve efficiency/reduce emissions vs upgrading millions of cars.

I don't think that's really true. I though coal is quite slow at ramp-up. Gas (sorry, UK English, I mean gaseous hydrocarbons like propane) is much more responsive. Coal is cheap (especially if you already have the infrastructure, built when labor was cheaper), that's its advantage.

Anyway, even coal is more efficient than car engines. IIRC, coal is something like 60% efficient (and it really can't get better, due to the laws of physics), cars are more like 30% efficient. OK, coal power still needs to be distributed and then there's some loss in the electric engine, but it's minimal, and petrol also needs distribution. Thus, coal creates less carbon emissions than petrol.

Coal in a modern generating plant is burned quite efficiently. It's pulverized into a powder, then blown into the combustion chamber with a lot of high pressure air. The burning coal is literally a fireball under the boiler.

The old image of heavy black smoke pouring out of the stacks is not the way it is anymore.

http://www.canadiancleanpowercoalition.com/index.php/downloa...

> And wouldn't we just end up shifting where waste comes from (from Cars to power plants)

That's something you want to do. Dealing with a big stationary waste source (often that you can locate at a place of your choosing) is a lot easier than dealing with millions of small, mobile waste sources.

> what happens if electric vehicles do become popular?

That is a really strange question to ask. I think more appropriate question would be "what does it take for electric vehicles to become popular".

Quoted from comments and decided to analyze: "A family sedan for $80,000. That will work."

At an average of 15K miles/year, 30mpg, and $3/gal of gas, that's $1500 in gasoline a year. Over 5 years, that's a savings of $7500 ($10000 for $4/gal). We're not quite at that point where it offsets completely from a pure 'gas vs electric' POV (I'm not sure if the car has a Mercedes-comparable interior or a Toyota-comparable interior).

I don't think this means it won't work, but I was interested in the gas savings over time. I would buy one if I could afford an $80000 car.

If you really wanted an EV now, you could get a Nissan LEAF for a lot less than a Tesla Roadster. But if you want a couple generations, you should get a pretty decent price and a much bigger range (not to mention that by then fast charging stations should be more common).

The Tesla model S is supposed to be similar in dimension to the last 7 series BMW... which retails for about $80k. I believe fit and finish is to be up to that par as well. http://autos.yahoo.com/bmw/7-series/2012/

It's not close on a gas savings level, but you don't buy a Tesla for the gas savings... You buy it because it is a different type of car and to make a statement.

frankly I don't see why they need to make it so big. Weight is one of the biggest problems for fuel efficiency, it takes a ton more juice to move a 4,000lb car vs a a 3,000lb car.

I find it interesting that they intend to make a wagon/estate version with rear-facing seats (article says 7 passengers, so my best guess is that it has to be a wagon in that form). They must really want to make the 'family' statement, because no other demographic regularly sits 7 people.

Everyone driving around in an SUV seem to feel the need for seating 7 people, even if a microscopic fraction of them actually do...

I love the Tesla guys, but I doubt they have the pricing power of BMW.

In that price range we're talking conspicuous consumption, and a beamer is definitely conspicuous, but a Tesla?

Maybe if you're a gay engineer dude, this Tesla will be a great way to score other gay geek dudes - wait or maybe it's for lesbian geeks... not sure, my point is I doubt this will make people think it can get them laid as much an equally priced BMW will.

This is why I think it is overpriced.

I'm hoping to put in a deposit for a Model S Signature as a bay area vehicle (for personal and/or company use). The 300 mile range is perfect for SFBA, and it's big enough for 4-5 people comfortably, or datacenter equipment, and has more novelty value than a lambo among geeks.

I wouldn't take an exotic (Tesla, Fiskar Karma, F or L, etc.) on long road trips in the US, especially with a non-standard drivetrain, due to the lack of service options.

Within the bay area, especially if you have 240 or 480v charging at home/office, it's perfect. I know a Roadster user who has his mainly because he hates gas stations.

Your analysis left out the cost of electricity that has to be used instead of gas. Even so in 5 years you save a maximum of 10% of the cost of the car. This only works if you're put a personal value on not using fossil fuels which far exceeds the cost of gasoline.

In return you get a very fast sedan that can't be used for any long road trips. It would be fine for commutes and around town, but even something like a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco would be a major fail.

LA to SF is a long drive and not comfortable to do in one day. Yes it can be done if you take i-5 and drive like a maniac for ~6-7 hours.

However, I'd much rather take the scenic route via 101 and stop over in Paso Robles and get the car charged up while at a nice B&B, wine tasting, etc. ;)

Must be a perception thing. One way isn't "long" in the sense that its only 300 miles. Its 'long' to drive SF to Las Vegas. Basically any drive over about 480 miles of freeway starts getting long.

That being said, the 'long trip' scenario is somewhat of red herring. If you regularly travel several hundred miles a day then an all electric car is probably unlikely to meet your vehicle requirements. If its an occasional (once a year) kind of thing then creative solutions might arise to address it.

Were the Tesla guys willing to put a high power plug in the back I could imagine a 'trailer' which held a generator and a gas tank and provided power all the way there.

There's actually 5 charging stations that Tesla installed on the 101 between SF and LA. If we got serious about electric cars, higher charging station density would help with long trips.

And I agree, SF<->LA is not a long drive.

Until those "creative solutions" have materialized and hit the market, we have to work within the constraints that we have to live with.

As someone with a family, my requirements for a family car need to cover the possibility of extended road trips. Sure, I know that in theory I could just rent a gas car for that, but I know in practice that it won't happen. So "able to handle long road trips" is solidly in my personal list of firm requirements for a family vehicle. Sure, I don't need to do it every day. But it is something I need that vehicle to do.

I get that it doesn't work in your particular case. Early adopters will fund the research to get the cost of energy storage down and energy density up.

Google says it's less than 8 hours with traffic. I've easily made 8 hour drives in a single day.

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/electricity_locations....

Every major US city has electric power stations. From that map, you could very easily make a continental road trip in the United States. And, this map is out of date. Chicago alone is building over 250 quick charge stations this year.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-02-10/classified/ct-...

You may have power stations. But http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/charging says that a full recharge still takes about 4 hours for their best option that they offer. That time needs to come down - way down.

Not sure about all of the charging stations listed, but a Level 3 charging station takes about 30 minutes.

Obviously, there are improvements to be made. But the infrastructure to support electric cars is quickly being stood up. Much of that has come from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, definitely, but there are going to be the equivalent of 87 gas stations for electric cars in Chicago at the end of this year. I find that amazing and uplifting.

30 minutes still is non-trivial to the person accustomed to the 5 minute fill up. Technology will get better but we also need to be willing to make some lifestyle changes that enable us to live cleaner, healthier lives going forward. Reading a book or exploring a new city or plugging in after lunch is a very pleasant way for those changes to come about.

Edit: The Chicago 250+ are all Level 3s. They are also building a couple hundred Level 2s which take the four hours that the Telsa one does.

Let's assume that it's a high-end luxury sedan, not a low-end family sedan. Unless gas goes up to $100/gallon, there's no way you'll save money by buying the Tesla over a affordable mid-size like a Honda Accord or Ford Fusion.

So let's compare that to a Mercedes E-class. According to US News(http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Mercedes-Be...), the average price out the door is about $48,000 for the model with the fewest options. Let's round that up to $50,000, because we want alloy wheels or some other additional feature.

The mileage of the car is 24 highway, 17 city, so let's average that to about 20(a bit more city driving than highway). So that's $15,000 in gas over the 5 years(30/20=1.5). So the total cost of the car, not counting other replacements, is around $65,000.

That's still $15,000 less than the $80,000 on the Tesla, and you're not going to spend $15,000 on car washes and other parts(brakes, oil, etc.) in that time. It should also be noted that if you need to buy replacement batteries in that 5 year period, the cost increases to $100,000.

EDIT: I didn't include the cost of electricity, or the electrical work needed to get the extra 220 volt circuit out to your garage.

The high end Mercedes luxury sedan is the S-class, for which the low end price paid is about $90,000.

I agree. The personal carbon guilt price will need to heavily weigh in their favor, as btilly said next to you.

Most people don't buy luxury vehicles for their economics.

Edmunds estimates the total cost of ownership for a Mercedes-Benz E-class sedan at $77K for five years. http://www.edmunds.com/mercedes-benz/e-class/2011/tco.html?s...

Unless the Tesla doesn't depreciate or need repairs, most of that extra cost is going to be similar.

One thing that seems unaddressed is how quickly the car recharges. For example, if I am going on a road trip in a gasoline car, when I run out of gas, I can quickly fill it up and be on my way. With an electric car, an electrical recharge probably takes several hours.

Electric swap stations (eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfdYU7gk8fs) strike me as one of the most promising concepts for electric vehicles. Imagine if rather than ever owning a battery you're just perpetually rent the use of one (perhaps with a small per-swap fee). Alas it would seem we're still many many years away from seeing anything like this rolled out in a real way.

Tesla seems to be going in the opposite direction, making the battery pack a structural component.

Definitely. Better place does this, and charges on a per mile basis (in Israel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

Tesla's next car, a sedan, will cost $58,000. What is it that makes electric cars so expensive? I don't know much about cars, but I thought electric cars had fewer parts than a gas car. Is it just that the parts for electric cars haven't reached economies of scale yet?

Batteries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Price

Batteries are still expensive, and there isn't much economies of scale yet.

Batteries.

In The Innovator's Dilemma there is an analysis from the 90s presented about when pure electric cars would be economically viable for a mass market. Based on then-current technology projections, it would happen around 2020.

The critical combination that their analysis found necessary is price below a certain level, sufficient acceleration to merge into an Interstate, sufficient range, and fast enough recharge time. The Tesla currently fails on price and recharge time. It over-delivers on power, and has about the right range.

OK, but why are batteries expensive? 20 years ago rechargeable AA cells were very expensive, now they are cheap, plentiful, and work better than ever.

Will electric vehicle cells follow the same curve? If not, why not? Is it because they contain precious materials? Lack of economies of scale? ???

The long and short of it is, "Moore's law is ubiquitous."

In many very different industries for a long time, once there was an agreed upon and measurable criterion for "better" they delivered exponentially improving performance for periods of decades. What is exceptional about transistors is the rate of doubling, but not the general shape of the curve. (More normal rates of sustained improvement are 5-10%/year.)

Lithium-ion batteries have been on a sustained path of improvement since the first commercial ones were released in 1991. If that curve is projected forward to 2020, you hit a price-performance point where electric cars are likely to be competitive.

Incidentally if the history of innovation is to be trusted, I would not look for the first successful mainstream electric cars to be from major auto makers or from companies like Tesla. Successful disruptions tend to come up from the bottom of the market. Look at companies like Club Car that sell things like electric golf carts that are already appearing on the road. It is much easier for companies to expand upmarket than it is to strip products down. There is no reason to believe that this has changed.

There are examples of markets being disrupted from the top. The iPod is a notable example. It started at a very high price, then dropped into the range where it has become ubiquitous.

The trick seems to be that the company who establishes a high-price and high-margin product needs to be willing to cannibalize their own sales with lower priced offerings.

That sounds about right. I think Tesla plans on reducing the price in half for every next models every 3 years. So that would be $120k in 2009 (Roadster), $60k in 2012 (Model S), $30k in 2015 (already announced)...so I suppose a $15k-$20k in 2018. That should make it mainstream enough.

Hopefully, by then we'll also have Li-Air batteries or more viable ultra-capacitors (which Elon Musk thinks are the future for electric cars).

Also, Better Place has an interesting business model, similar to the one of carriers subsidizing phones, by subsidizing electric cars to make them cheaper upfront and then having to pay a few hundred dollars per month to replace your battery at their stations whenever it discharges. I heard it's already gaining traction in some Middle East countries and also in China, and they plan to expand in some European countries, soon.

http://www.betterplace.com/

The number one thing Tesla has to do if they want to become part of the mainstream is to get the United States Government to establish standards for car batteries. The downside to this is that it limits innovation. However, without the ability to swap batteries at "battery (gas) stations" electric cars will stay in the "early adapters" phase indefinitely. The alternative is to develop a cost effective battery that can last for a very long time (read: 500+ miles) which actually might be in the near future. On a side note, I wish Tesla sold gas hybrid cars because I love the design.

Electric cars doesn't solve the problem if we are using oil to produce electricity. That is, we need to solve that problem first. Actually, by replacing oil with some sort of renewable energy or safe-to-use nuclear energy is already a step to reducing oil consumption.

I'm not here saying that Tesla cars are useless. I didn't try them, but from the design, speed and mileage they seem pretty decent. They are the future, but it's important to look at the energy that runs them and get to solve that problem first.

Electric cars are one step in the direction of reducing oil use. And, we cannot solve the oil problem by solving the oil problem first.

The great thing about electric anything is that it's a flexible energy source. You can generate electricity with many different fuels. So you can work on the end user energy needs a bit at a time, without requiring the entire economy to shift all at once.

In the US only 1% of electricity comes from oil. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/83/2008_US_electr...

Innovation would cease to exist if all we did was figure out how/why NOT to do something. Most have not had the pleasure of experiencing the thrill of this technology before commenting. Tesla's real issue is that Musk is really only interested in developing, selling his technology and driving their stock price up so he can get out of the car biz. NOT saving the world, one car at a time. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Here are the three primary components of my future electric car, ordered by the most costly first:

1. Power generation: lots and I mean lots of cheap solar panels on the roof of my home, and a small wind turbine. $25000

2. Power storage: compressed air tanks. $10000

3. A light weight vehicle that meets my own specifications of a small but practical delivery vehicle. $5000

Breaking into the automotive industry is tough. Tesla (or any new manufacturer) should expect to slog along for 10+ years before seeing any significant sales and impact.

nooooo! I had a personal goal of buying a new one in the next few years. Hopefully they bring it back and/or a similar all-electric sports car comes out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com