Tesla investor Steve Jurvetson drives off in the first Model S
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
Keep in mind, Tesla is at the very beginning of the adoption curve for electric cars. When I was a kid, in 1984, my dad bought a CD player for $1K. It was an expensive "toy" for rich people. I'll spare you the rest of the story.
As for the government backed loan, I blame the government, not the corporations that take it.
The interesting thing I learned is that a lot of the Tesla Roadsters will be available as Certified Pre-Owned, starting in Fall 2012 and pretty much into 2013. They had a bunch of them out for "lease a Roadster until your Model S is ready", and those are delivery positions in Fall 2012; there was also a lease program which will be expiring in 2013 as well (since the Roadster is no longer in production). I am still a lot more into a Model S sized car (luxury and functionality over performance and "fun"), but it would be a good option.
So how is this kind of design strategy called, if there is a name for it at all? I am asking, because it strikes me as really obvious, while it seems like one does not see it too often.
[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/models/features#/styling (scroll down to about half of the page)
Seriously, why is everything you have to carry with you getting bigger and bigger. Phones and car keys being the two main villains here.
Now, as an engineer, I of course value actually building the thing much higher than investing into getting it built, but I still would give the investors some credit for actually believing that Tesla was able to accomplish the very unlikely.
In the context of HN, this is IMHO interesting a) because it's about the engineering feat of building that car and b) about investors investing in something they actually believe in as opposed to something to make a quick buck with.
Instead we learn how a wealthy guy can write a cheque on impulse for a very expensive new car "...and then toss it across the table. Everyone was stunned.”.
I don't begrudge the guy his money. I'm sure he's earned it and he gets to decide how to spend it, but the fawning style of this article annoyed me.
Telsa's technology and Telsa the business are totally on-topic for HN, but this article isn't about any of those things.
And unlike the Roadster, which was a $100K toy for rich people, the Model S is a practical $60K sedan for not-quite-as-rich people.
I worry that the market is leaving Tesla behind, though. With the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf on the market, not to mention the gorgeous Fisker Karma, the case for a Model S is getting weaker.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-throug...
Coal is majority of the U.S. power grid: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c01.html
Tesla batteries are cleaner than older versions, but they contain some Cobalt, and Lithium has many impacts and risks for humans.
Also, Tesla is a public company and therefore discloses their finantials. Their total debt is 270M, and they have 280M in cash (therefore, negative net debt).
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-11/tesla-to-begin-r...
And to point out the obvious, the Federal government extracts far more money from the oil companies (and hence oil consumers) by way of gas taxes than it pays out in subsidies.
This payoff can't be captured by a private investor, so the government has incentive to invest earlier (and at higher risk levels) than private investors.
[NB I'm in no way implying that anyone has to justify their tastes in cars (or anything else) - I'm just interested!]
PS: People talk about how long it takes to get a full charge but if you can add 100 miles to the range in an hour while your stopped for lunch that bumps the daily range to 400 which would have more than covered me, but they can apparently get close to a full charge in 45 minutes.
I'm probably not an average driver - I don't drive at all during the week (walk to work and pretty much everywhere else, taxi to airport) but when I do drive to go walking/cycling/skiing the total I drive in a weekend is probably close to 300 miles - either in one day or parking car where recharging won't be available.
- How many miles per gallon do you get?
- Errr..
- Is it 4 miles per gallon?
- And how big is the tank?
- Errr
- Only enough room for 19 gallons?
- Err, yes.
- So thats 76 miles on one tank?
- Err Yes
- And how far away from the office do you live?
- Err, 77 miles.
Seriously, do not worry about "only 300 miles and I will need to charge it". People will buy it, and then go look for a plug in station.
At least once a week we're close enough that 200 miles is our "with a reasonable safety margin" number.
BTW - when I'm driving 400 miles in a day, I don't spend an hour eating lunch on the way. (It's very hard to average 50 miles an hour, so 400 miles is around 8 hours. I've actually done far more, and you can't do that if you're off the road.) And, why are you assuming that the lunch place will have the relevant charging station?
In other words "nobody needs what it doesn't do" is wrong as is "it can handle that situation".
Second, the fuel prices are much higher. Petrol is $8.21 / gallon, so the fuel economics are very different.
Third, road taxes, VAT, car registration, etc. all offer steep discounts or zero-rates for electric vehicles.
Also WSDOT just installed 7 EV charging stations along Interstate 5: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2012/05/30_newevstations.htm
Millions of toxic batteries are a problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if some future scientist/entrepeneur figures out something smart to do with them. It's not exactly nuclear waste.
Ethanol is indeed a scam at the moment, but when it can be harvested and processed by electric combines and new plants, it will be an effective way to store other clean energy.
I have strong faith that eventually we'll figure how to use even nuclear waste productively.
(Yeah, we have arguably too much coal here as well, but .. it's changing and the renewable energy changes are a relevant subject in elections)
1: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-... 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4028019 (the discussion regarding [1])
You can argue that to get more people to use public trasport is a bigger win, but to say electric vehicles is a fraud is just wrong.
That's an amazing efficiency win.
So far, the biggest downside is the extended charge time. To fully recharge the car using the fastest charger, it's about 4-5 hours.
It certainly is! Burning enough gas in a small engine to power a car is much more polluting than generating the same energy in a commercial-scale coal-power plant.
It is MUCH, MUCH easier to control pollution at a point-source (like, say, a power plant) than it is to control pollution on a moving platform.
If you only knew the kinds of engineering efforts that have been devised to make the gasoline engine more efficient and less polluting, you might consider how much better electricity generation via fossil fuels will get if we were really serious about having an energy policy in the US.
SO far, there isn't a mechanism known yet for generating energy from a concentrated source that doesn't involve some form of pollution. Coal, nuclear, solar all have their by-products.
Once you account for externalities, there are very very few options that look great.
They remain very much a toy but maybe one day someone will be able to build one that will work on a practical day to day basis.
I feel there is a lot of mileage (pun intended) in the "diesel electric" combination where the juice is generated by an internal combustion engine that can be run very efficiently and then fed to the electric drive (with a small battery back-up for peak demands).
From a security (vs. environmental) perspective, burning US coal is superior to importing oil.
Mercedes "only" sold 9,804 S-Class models in the US last year. Maybe they'll step it up.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/teslas-closed-loop-battery-r...