Tesla: a little bit Apple, a little bit Google, and about to be huge | Hacker News Reader

Tesla: a little bit Apple, a little bit Google, and about to be huge

slate.com

156 pointseplanit172 comments

One of the most interesting long-term plays here is when Tesla builds a truck.

The #1 and #2 best selling "cars" by volume are trucks and trucks represent ~4 of the top 10 best selling cars overall. (1)

Musk has said that he has "this idea for a really advanced electric truck that has the performance of a sports car but actually more towing power and more carrying capacity than a gasoline or diesel truck of comparable size," Musk said.(2)

While this is probably several years out, as it would likely result in an all new wheel-base, etc I think that would be a hugely compelling product line if it can compete on the same stats w/towing / carrying capacity

(1) http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2013/02/top-10-best-selli...

(2) http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130410/...

For independent repairmen in the US, this could be a big win. You could have something in a pickup truck form factor, but with potentially much lower operating and maintenance costs. In the US, lots of people are operating a lot more truck than they actually need just to keep up appearances.

If such trucks were available for good leasing terms, this could be a goldmine.

Since trucks are so popular with small businesses, electric trucks could also be a great type of vehicle for the government to subsidize.

Something tells me they'll find a way to say that electric trucks would be bad for small business.

Frankly, if you have to subsidize it then it wasn't good for business. The government could set the example by moving their fleets to electric, establishing standards for charging and the like.

Get school buses electrified, one county near me puts up some incredible numbers, nearly seventy thousand miles a day. http://www.cobbk12.org/centraloffice/Transportation/

Businesses will move to what works, see how some have moved to natural gas as its more cost efficient. Same will happen with electrics. Don't be so free with money we don't have.

> Frankly, if you have to subsidize it then it wasn't good for business.

Electronic car subsidies attempt to balance out the negative externalities of burning fossil fuels. These subsidies are meant to serve the public interest, which is often inclusive of business interests.

You can subsidize it or stop subsidizing big gasoline trucks. But you can't keep the implicit subsidies for gasoline and cry big government when people ask for subsidies for electric trucks.

Yes you can. These 'implicit' subsidies you are referring to rely on completely made up numbers. It's not the same thing and trying to convince people that it is doesn't work.

It's not just subsidies for gasoline (and oil exploration) to worry about, it's the externalities they carry.

Really? How much do you think the US spends on its military presence in oil producing regions? Made up? I think not.

> Frankly, if you have to subsidize it then it wasn't good for business.

Right now, the government subsidizes small businesses buying big-ass gas guzzling Hummers. Maybe the first step is to get them to stop that. Then again, the rules are so general now, many could get a government subsidy on an electric truck, provided the sticker was > $50k.

Allowing depreciation of purchased vehicles is not a subsidy, besides Hummers are not made anymore. Regardless, the same write off they get for buying any vehicle would apply to electrics.

The point I was making is that there is more than room enough for various level of government to make the first move instead of paying businesses to do so. Move mass transportation to electric first as well as school buses. Both makes lots of starts and stops making them ideal for electric drive trains.

Independent repairmen drive from job to job all day long. They could easily exhaust the range unless there's a breakthrough there. Ditto delivery drivers, etc.

A buddy of mine in Vancouver is a plumber who does service calls, and he'll easily burn through a tank of gas in two days in his van. They'd have to be able to go 300-400 miles without recharging in order for it to make sense. I could easily see his company ditching gas for electric if they got that though, and the far lower operating costs would justify a fairly step increase in lease costs. At around $200/week in gas, they could spend an extra $500/month on the lease and still come out way ahead.

300-400 miles in an urban environment? Surely that's 8 hours of driving right there - how does he find any time to work?

They service the entire GVRD, so it can easily be an hour of highway driving between jobs. Also, 16 hour days aren't unheard of. Bear in mind, too, that he might have an 1600lb boiler in the back of the truck, which isn't friendly from a fuel efficiency standpoint.

The 300-400 mile range isn't to cover the average case, but rather the worst case. The vehicle needs to be able to handle the hardest days that'll get thrown at it without recharging. An algo that's O(log n) in the average case but O(2^n) in the worst won't likely find traction.

> An algo that's O(log n) in the average case but O(2^n) in the worst won't likely find traction.

Yes, that's the case for an algorithm. In the case of a business model, there's a lot of inefficiency that could be turned into profit. (Zipcar)

How about O(n log n) average but O(n^2) worst case?

Seems like if this was a standard, some larger job sites would have it?

Not to mention- let's say you have a truck that does 200 miles on a charge, like the current Teslas. Then you put a 5,000lb boat behind it. What is the range now? How close is the water?

granted Tesla is a US company so you are probably right, but on the international market trucks are not relevant. SUVs are though!

Even if pickup trucks aren't, vans and service trucks are (box trucks, etc.), which are essentially built on the same engine as a pickup truck. (big pickup trucks are sold with the ability to put a custom box on on them, too)

Replace 'truck' with 'white van'.

I'm not too sure how directly replaceable those two car types are, since performance matters a hell of a lot more in a truck than in a "white van".

What I really want is some kind of truck which can provide on board power to tools, as well as motive power. This could be something with a big battery bank, or a diesel-electric hybrid (where the diesel can be left running for days at a time and refueled under load...), etc.

It might be hard to convince someone who is a "traditional truck buyer" to accept a slight range penalty or whatever (although fleet managers and business owners would), but if he could plug in his tools and have great work lighting/etc. at the job site, he would probably take it on that basis.

I'm pretty sure the MBTA has some gasoline hybrid trucks that can provide power to tools; I forget who makes them, but it's one of the usual major automakers (but was from a very limited production run).

I know a lot of ranchers who keep their own storage tanks on site for gas, because they live so far from a gas station. An electric truck would be awesome, especially considering most ranchers have the capital to install solar panels. Then you will only need diesel for back hoes and the like

The author should do more research rather than just blindly copying Tesla ad copy: Tesla's batteries are not the most efficient in the industry. The LEAF is rated at 140 wh/kg [1]. Nissan makes their own batteries. The mid-grade Model S battery is only 120 wh/kg.

[1] http://www.mynissanleaf.com/wiki/index.php?title=Battery_spe...

Energy density and efficiency are two different things.

Tesla batteries are actively cooled/managed, allowing for moving current in and out of them faster, while Nissan's batteries are air cooled (preventing faster charges/discharges).

I think you're talking about power density.

"The author should do more research"

Add: Fawning. This is an article whose intent is to polarize the community of haters and likers by comparing it to Apple.

There is really no comparison. The Tesla isn't a better "car" in the sense of how it gets you between a and b than the existing vehicles out there which are mature products that have been improved over time in the features and benefits that people care about. With Tesla you have to worry about distance, batteries, the high cost - I mean who cares if it accelerates as quickly as it does and who cares that there is no noise?

The potential market for products in the price category that computers are in is much different from cars. Most people don't buy multiple cars and replacing one is a big decision to make. It's not like adding an ipod and an ipad.

Bottom line is what do I get by buying an Electric car exactly even assuming it is the same price as the gas vehicle? How important is the gas savings when you weigh that over the lack of utility in other areas?

I mean get real. Stuff like this will be a non-starter to most people:

"which will give you 150 miles of power in a 30-minute charge"

How many people are going to want to deal with that?

People buy cars on emotion not rationality. It's the same reason someone wants 4 wheel drive even though they might only need it a few days per year.

I think you answer your own question here:

"Bottom line is what do I get by buying an Electric car exactly even assuming it is the same price as the gas vehicle? How important is the gas savings when you weigh that over the lack of utility in other areas?"

...

"People buy cars on emotion not rationality. It's the same reason someone wants 4 wheel drive even though they might only need it a few days per year."

People who pay $90k for a car to commute back and forth from work every day don't care about saving money on gas. It's just a status symbol like any other luxury car. But I hope it takes off, because it will finance the expansion of Tesla into cheaper cars.

People buy cars on emotion not rationality. It's the same reason someone wants 4 wheel drive even though they might only need it a few days per year.

Depending on the circumstances though, those couple days you need it might be absolutely crucial. It's very easy to think you'll need 4WD when you never will, and many people do, but frequency of use is only part of the equation.

There's a recent Consumer Reports video on YouTube where the three people discussing the Model S all seemed to think that if they were trying to spend $90k on a car, they'd get a Model S and not something else.

I think these supercharging stations are sad. I get annoyed at the 5 - 10 minutes that it takes to fill up my gas tank. 30 minutes to fill up would be excruciating. I remember seeing videos a few years ago where they wanted to have a standard for robotic drive throughs that automatically swapped out a cars low battery for a fully charged one. You could have a fresh battery in less than 5 minutes without getting out of the car. Your old batter would get charged and end up in someone else's car later. Why is that not obviously the best solution here?

Batteries degrade overtime so consumers wouldn't want to swap out their battery for one with unknown usage.

I think you have it backwards: if consumers constantly swap out their batteries, they unload the uncertainty of pricing the battery's degradation onto the experts. Charging stations will retire decrepit batteries and replace them with new tech. If today's batteries last 50% longer than expected or 50% shorter than expected, the consumer doesn't have to worry -- they will always have a battery that works OK and they will never get slapped with a massive unplanned repair charge. They won't have to worry about upgrading their batteries or choosing between high capacity and low capacity batteries since they can just do that at the swap station. They also don't have to worry about recycling since the station will handle it for them.

We have a program like this for BBQ gas bottles in melbourne (possibly nation wide, I've never checked). Works well - you swap your empty bottle with a full one, pay and take it home.

No filling up and you know you have a safe bottle that has been checked (in Australia you cannot use one that is older than 10 years). Funnily enough you also get less precious about its "performance" - as long as it works, users tend to lover look the appearance.

Car batteries are a different matter but I think there are some valid parallels here.

Yep- Thats absolutely the way this should be. Its likely because of a liability issue- The cost of the batteries is so high, there is a real risk of someone swapping in a dead/fake/old one and then tesla accruing the huge loss of a potentially new battery ( 25k ? )

I think the best solution is the 'pre charged' liquid fillup-

http://www.laptopsforlessblog.com/batteries/cambridge-crude-...

http://www.greenbang.com/a-new-way-to-charge-electric-cars-f...

I could definitely see that as a design challenge. Charged liquid seems like a good idea. Anything to get charge times down to what gasoline is.

Elon hinted an upcoming announcement that will make refueling a Tesla car as fast as a gasoline one. It's probably along the lines of this.

Link: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/332516435488280577

It's going to be spectacular to see this in action. Literally.

The good news is you never have to go to the gas station for day to day usage.

For most people this will mean dramatically less time "filling up."

I think this is under appreciated. Its impossible to install fuel stations near the office, its easy to install plugs. I'm waiting for the City to figure out that charging 25c a kW for charging in their parking garages is a net win for them. People plug in when they are at home (usually, our CTO is in an apartment without an easy to reach plug). In that scenario, most of the time, perhaps 90 - 95% of the time you never are 'waiting to fill up' the car is just always ready.

.25 a kW is a hell of a bargain if you are plugged in for 8 hours.

That's the thing, the last time it came up in the news it seemed San Jose had a contract with PG&E where they paid a fixed rate for power at 0.12/kWh in their facilities. If they re-sold that power for 0.25/kWh to people parking their electric vehicles, for every kWh sold the city recovers the cost of one kWh they have used. City garages get preferred by folks with electric cars (better occupancy, more revenue) and its a win.

Now as this 'win' becomes more obvious we'll see sharks come in as 'contractors', bidding to 'run the garages' for $X where that number is padded by money they will make selling charge to vehicle owners.

Today, this is silly since the number of electric only cars on the market is vanishingly small, but eventually it will be the norm. Having a parking meter design on the shelf that can charge for parking and supply electricity is probably good preparation for that time.

Wow. I pay .01 per kWh in Chicago with time of day metering between noon-6am.

I wish someone had a good answer for apartments. The last time I had somewhere to charge my car overnight was in my parents' garage around 1990.

I think if we can figure out how to get 40% efficiency solar panels (which have been made in labs, but not mass produced) embedded in electric cars' paint, we're looking at about 1 mph of range added per square foot of solar panel (400 wh per mile / 400 watts per sq foot), and that may work out to 30-40 miles per day of added range just by parking in direct sunlight, which may cover many people's commute, especially for apartment dwellers who probably live closer to work than people who have space for conventionally inefficient solar panels.

That should have been 1 mph of range added per square meter, not per square foot.

I think you are underestimating the investment needed to provide charging power to dozens of vehicles. Yeah one or two novelty "EV" spaces with a charging outlet is easy, but scaling up will get expensive, not just more wire and conduit, but new utility substations needed to handle the load.

This is what kills me. People in the tech community seem to think that electric outlets grow on trees or something. Apparently an electric car takes about as much power as a TV set or PS3, electricity will always be readily available at a fraction of the cost of gasoline or diesel, and we can all have a pony when we grow up.

It's great that we're starting to take alternative energy seriously in the US, but the fact that no one is looking at distribution and load-management issues -- up to and including the mandatory standardization of swappable battery modules for EVs -- is really disconcerting.

We're patting ourselves on the back for looking ahead, but we're not looking far enough.

That is certainly possible. If you want to make every space in a parking garage a 'recharger' space then you're going to rebuild the garage anyway. Tesla 'slow' chargers are 10kW [1] so a 300 space garage would be at a maximum of 3MW if every space was used and charging. That is a larger load than some commercial buildings but not exceptionally so (the NetApp building 3 used to draw 1.5MW from the lines) It certainly isn't 'new substation' level of load.

[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/charging#/basics

The problem is that you're thinking of a supercharger station like a gas station. You get annoyed at the 5-10 minutes it takes to fill up your gas tank because you have to do it every week, because the gasoline fumes make them very unpleasant places to be, and because you almost invariably have to fill up at frustrating times (e.g. in the afternoon so you have gas to get to work the next day).

But a supercharger station isn't like a gas station. In an electric car, your routine charging is handled at home, overnight. The supercharger station is for emergencies and long trips. It's not a place you go to after a long day at work so you you can get back to work the next day, it's something you can work into your road trip, something you can combine with bathroom breaks and getting a cup of coffee.

The robotic drive throughs are a lot more expensive for a questionable amount of value-add. The vast majority of people spend most of their time in a usage mode (commuting to work), where in-home charging is sufficient. But they also go on the occasional long-drive. That's the use-case supercharger stations fill. After that, what's left? Who takes long car trips (200+ miles) on such a frequent basis that a 30 minute charge in the middle (that can be easily combined with a rest-stop break) is a major inconvenience?

Exactly. Or to put it in a different way, the total time you spend waiting for your car to recharge/refuel is way lower for an electric car. The electric car is optimized for the 99% case (where recharging at home is sufficient). A gasoline car is optimized for the 1% case where you take a road trip.

You get the exact same effect for people who claim they need a pickup truck instead of a small city car just so they can transport some furniture or motorcycles or a Christmas tree in the back.

I own a Tundra short bed, but also a Lexus ct200h (wife) and a Model S.

If there was an app like Uber, but for pickup trucks (on-demand/fungible capacity for transport of larger-than-car items), I'd sell my pickup truck tomorrow. I don't own the truck because I haul every day, I own it because its 8pm and someone calls and says they need help moving something right now.

Have a Home Depot nearby? Most places do. They have long hours (6AM-10PM) and rent trucks by the hour or the day.

Bingo. The first time I saw this at my local Home Depot, I sent a photo of the rental trucks to my brother. He now drives a 2-door car.

* (Well, he drove one then, too. But we were stressed about how to move large items in a pinch, and this solved our problem.)

If they had online rental reservation with an in cab activation terminal they could conceivably expand that to 24 hours a day availability.

It works for Home Depot because they don't have additional real estate requirements to support truck rental, just park them in a standard parking space at their existing retail outlet.

If there is no Home Depot maybe other business such as Walmart or the region's grocery store chain could get in the truck rental business using their own surplus parking.

If you live in a city, Zipcar is great for this.

How many times does that happen? Genuine question. I never needed a van or a truck out of the blue. Is it something to do with the American culture?

Your friend is getting a new couch and will give you the old one. How do you get it from his house to your house?

On the notice board in my local supermarket, there are about 10 man and a van business cards pinned on. I'd probably call the one with the cutest logo.

That's the cultural difference. In the US, we like to do things ourselves, no matter the cost.

It's funny because of the wasted resources.

I wouldn't say no matter the cost, but if the income is disposable, yes, we'd prefer to be able to do something when we want and not based on the schedule of a company/vendor we'd have to have the service provided by.

A great example? Look how popular 24 hour Walmarts are.

2-3 times a week.

really? what kind of situations?

People with trucks arrange their lives with the expectation they can immediately move large objects. The rest of us only move large objects a few times a year and borrow our friends' and families' trucks, and they resent us for it.

No resentment here. If couldn't have afforded the ~$45K for the truck, and the few thousand dollars per year for gas and insurance, I wouldn't have bought it.

I don't get people. I don't own the truck for social signaling, I own it as a tool, just like my welding gear, my CNC mill, and my laser sintering 3D printer.

You say "Hey, sorry maybe you should have thought that out better. But can it wait until tomorrow, because we can go rent a truck for way cheaper than me paying insurance and maintenance on a truck in case you have an 8pm 'emergency' again."

Zipcar rents Tacomas and E-150s. I wish they'd add something like a long-bed F-250, but I guess many zipcar drivers would find it difficult to drive one (even driving the E-150 in cities is a pain)

Zipcar has pickup trucks depending on where you live.

I live in a suburb of Chicago; no Zipcars nearby. I am a member though, as it allows me rental both in the US and Europe (I travel to Europe often, and I find Zipcar rentals very convenient there).

I agree, for people who have a house and a garage/driveway that's true. But many (most? also think internationally) people like me park on the street everyday. So until there are outlets available by the side of all streets, it'll be a pretty big inconvenience.

For the time being, Tesla seems pretty focused on the U.S. market, and we're a highly suburban country of garages and driveways.

That's a very good point.

Who takes 30 minute rest stops? I think you're reaching.

Anybody with a wife and/or kid? People who eat?

> Who takes long car trips (200+ miles) on such a frequent basis that a 30 minute charge in the middle (that can be easily combined with a rest-stop break) is a major inconvenience?

Um, lots of people do that. I used to drive from San Francisco to San Diego on a long weekend, a distance that would likely require two charging stops. Or drive to Lake Tahoe for skiing, which would require at least one. (And don't get me started on real long-distance driving trips of the visit-the-grand-canyon variety.)

If charging stations always just happened to be perfectly located to simultaneously coincide with (a) where you needed them, and (b) places you wanted to stop for 30 minutes, that'd be one thing. But it seems unlikely that would be the case. Instead it'd be exactly what you just said gas stations were in your first paragraph - a place you invariably have to fill up at frustrating times. I guess the good news is it might force you to get some reading done?

A Tesla seems like a fine second car for people who have a lot of money and want to use it to show off their Green credentials. It's not a fine primary car for people who actually like to drive and live in an area suited for doing so.

> people who actually like to drive and live in an area suited for doing so

So... that's what, about 15-20% of the US population? With all respect, your point seems isomorphic to "this car isn't perfect for everybody". Well, duh.

The point you're replying to is that (given a reasonable infrastructure) the Tesla works very acceptably as a long distance vehicle. I don't see anything in your post to refute that.

> So... that's what, about 15-20% of the US population?

Um, I actually would have assumed a much larger number. Parent post asked "Who takes long car trips (200+ miles) on such a frequent basis...<that charging would be inconvenient>?". My answer: I do (Or did, when I lived in California), and I know lots of other people who do too. I'm curious where that guy lives (and where you lived) that you think it isn't normal for a person who owns a car to often take 200+ mile car trips?

I think the Tesla might "work acceptably as a long distance vehicle" if you live someplace where actual long-distance travel is unusual and inconvenient. A lot of the east coast might qualify. But probably not California. Or Nevada or Wyoming or Texas or just about any of the larger states.

> your point seems isomorphic to "this car isn't perfect for everybody"

That it "isn't perfect" is a foregone conclusion. But this guy specifically claimed having to take a HALF-HOUR STOP to recharge isn't inconvenient on long trips. It quite obviously IS going to be inconvenient. You can reasonably claim the car is worth getting DESPITE that inconvenience factor. But you can't claim it's NOT INCONVENIENT. That's just nuts. That's drinking the Kool-Aid.

Given my frequency of long distance trips, assuming the existence of charging stations along them, and knowing my other requirements for a vehicle[1] and balancing these issues against each other, I would happily buy the Tesla intending to take it on said long distance trips. Pass that Kool-Aid, I guess.

Just take a deep breath. I know, I know -- someone is wrong on the internet. But you don't have to fix that, nor tell other people what kind of car they should decide to buy or what sorts of feature in that vehicle they should value over others. Relax and have fun in your low rider pickup truck or whatever floats your boat.

[1] Which, sadly, don't include the need for an new vehicle right now. So no Tesla for me.

> "Given my frequency of long distance trips, assuming the existence of charging stations along them"

Where are those trips? That "assuming" is actually kind of a big deal given that there are currently only 9 supercharger stations in the entire US so far.

I grant that I might be a bit of an edge case - the last time I rented a car for an extended period it was to drive from New York City to Jackson, Wyoming and back. There are currently no supercharger stations at all along either route I took. Without the superchargers it would take about 20 days to drive that distance roundtrip in a Tesla - more than twice what it took me in a gasoline car.

The good news is that they actually did anticipate my driving pattern from back when I lived near SF. They appear to have a charger for driving to Lake Tahoe/Reno and several for going down the LA/San Diego. So at least it's possible to do those trips now, which it wouldn't be at all without the superchargers - driving to San Diego would take three days instead of one if you had to use wall-power based chargers.

(I currently live near Manhattan and don't own a car. Had a 1999 New Beetle the last time I did.)

In other words, the Tesla isn't for people who go on road trips constantly. Oddly enough, this was the original claim.

I see your point, and I'm sure the technology will improve, but if I had to choose between "being annoyed for 5 minutes", and getting free charging for my car forever, I think the option I'd choose is obvious.

The company doing the battery swap stations is called Better Place -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

The problem is that the battery is rather larger than you think. In a Model S, it runs from the front wheel base to the rear one. Removing and exchanging it would be rather a lot of work.

It would be a lot of work on the Tesla, but not necessarily a lot of work on a car designed with this in mind. Would require industry standard battery packs, as well.

You're doing it wrong at 5-10 minutes. It's not good to fill up all the way. Half a tank is better. Less weight means better gas mileage.

Full tank means fewer trips to the gas station. My time is way more valuable than the mpg savings of the half tank approach.

More trips to the gas station means more fuel burned going to the gas station. Do you have evidence that the savings from carrying less weight outweighs this?

> Half a tank is better. Less weight means better gas mileage.

Half a tank is the weight of a child (gas weighs ~0.7kg/L). The mileage improvement is pretty much non-existent. Your repeated trips to gas stations probably waste more gas than this retarded scheme saves, even ignoring the time wasted.

At the track, sure, but I try to never let my car get below half a tank in case of earthquake, personal emergency, power outage, etc.

Musk seems to be this generation's Howard Hughes, and out of the complete pantheon of internet-famous technical folk, he's the one guy I could consider a hero.

Having said all of that, I sincerely hope we keep some sort of sense of detachment about all of this. Having Tesla play the role of Apple while fanboys and an fawing press cover each move does not help the rest of the startup community.

We have a million other problems to solve, not just electric cars and cheaper access to space. It's important to see past the fluff pieces to the underlying business decisions in order to harvest tactics than can be used by all.

tl;dr: big Musk fan, but let's be careful with the hype. It can obscure important lessons.

I think the interesting thing about electric cars is that they can contribute to the solution of several other issues. They are much cleaner technology, so they would help reduce air pollution as well as slow down global warming. The former also means fewer pollution-related problems like lung cancer and asthma.

I know this sounds like grasping at straws, but I'm speaking in the long run (~50 years). I think the effects will be noticeable then.

I think you're jumping ahead a least a few decades. Most electricity in the USA is generated from coal, though increasingly, natural gas. And we simply do not have the residential electrical infrastructure in place to support significant numbers of households charging one or two cars at night.

Coals and natural gas power plants are still a more efficient source of energy than gasoline.

Yeah, Musk talked about this in several interviews. Basically, the average efficiency for energy generation at the power plant is 60%, because the power plant is able to capture a lot of waste and reuse it. Whereas the efficiency of energy generation in an internal combustion engine is about 20%. Therefore, if all cars switched to electric, we would be looking at a 200% increase in efficiency in car transportation.

The 60% was specifically about a good, big GE combined cycle natural gas plant. I was under the impression that for a purely steam powered generator, such as you have in a coal or nuclear plant, significantly less than 60% of the heat turns into electricity.

I thought he was also saying that an internal combustion engine burning natural gas is about 20% efficient, with the implication that if you are absolutely determined to power a vehicle with natural gas, burning the gas in a big turbine and using it to charge batteries is going to be significantly more energy efficient than burning the natural gas directly in the vehicle.

You sure about that? Overnight is off-peak time. I'm highly suspect of the idea that we can run central air conditioning in every house all day -- plus normal usage -- but we don't have the grid capacity to charge 1-2 cars overnight.

And on your coal point, so called "clean coal", while not really clean, is a helluva lot cleaner than a gasoline burning ICE.

I can't help thinking that Tesla as successful as it is for a young company would be more successful in European countries where short driving distances and high fuel prices are common.

Canada and the US are lumped into one vehicle market but distances tend to be so much greater compared to Europe and fuel is a bit cheaper. That was mentioned in the article but there's more to it than that.

Weather is another problem Europe tends to have milder weather compared to the northern half of the continental US and all Canada. Half the year where I am it's below 0C , snow and snow tires (more aggressive grip) really affects milage my vehicle get practically half the milage I do in summer.

Tesla needs to build a vehicle with good ground clearance, a range of at least 400km, rapid charging and cost around $30,000. If not there's no way I would even think of buying one.

Tesla is an incredibly innovative company and I'd bet a lot that they'll be hugely successful in the long run. However I have to warn people on HN against interpreting the recent stock rises (from ~30 to 80) of TSLA as public faith in the company. What happened was a "short squeeze". At one point ~45% of TSLA stock was short, and as the price rose the investors with short positions were forced to buy long in order to cover. The buying drove the price even further up and caused an even bigger "squeeze" on those with short positions. This pattern leads to the astronomical rise you saw. Of course there was a real boost from the good earnings report which caused a 15+ point gain but a lot of the intermediate gain was due to the short squeeze.

Also, Consumer Reports has recently had some very positive things to say about the car.

drove Tesla, it is very nice and nifty. I also liked very much NeXT cube. IMO this is going to be a stepping stone to next wave of car designs from other Car Companies.

What bugs me is still unresolved issue of battery disposal dismal performance of the car in cold weather. I think this is a very nice leg up to turning car industry and making it innovate perhaps looking for a better all around technology. I hope that what tesla will do instead of providing a nice "copy" for everyone to parrot.

my 2c

Can you say more about 'battery disposal' ? As far as I can tell the batteries in the Tesla are largely recyclable (for example most, if not all of the material in that batteries can be recovered out of 'dead' batteries).

I thought the typical landfill in the US is willing to accept lithium batteries, but putting a Tesla battery pack in a landfill is economically dumb compared to selling the used pack to someone interested in recycling the raw materials in the pack.

I should check but I believe that Tesla buys back the old batteries for just that purpose (to recycle them). Not unlike going to the auto parts store with your old alternator and getting a rebuilt one to replace it. No doubt there will be 'rebuilt' battery packs for folks on a budget.

Elon commented, I think in the Foundations 20 video on Youtube, that the raw metals that go into a battery pack cost about $80/kwh.

That means that putting the battery pack from an 85 kwh Model S in a landfill is equivalent to putting a stack of over 300 $20 bills in a landfill.

(He was actually trying to make a point about how cheap battery packs might be to buy new in the future, with more efficient techniques for turning the raw materials into battery packs.)

"So how can Tesla persuade car giants to all work together to improve the world’s electric vehicle infrastructure? By licensing its tech to its competitors, in the same way that Google gives Android away to every phone-maker in the world."

Wrong comparison. Google gives away android only to increase its ad spaces and make more money. I don't think licensing technology enables such a platform for Tesla.

Google gives away Android as a competitive moat to both a) increase the amount of time spent on Google Services and b) decrease the threat of a mobile monopoly changing the default search engine (Imagine the threat of an Apple with 80% of the market and the negotiating power they'd have for the setting of default mobile search)

A fragmented, federated mobile ecosystem with more players results in more people using Google services even if competitors can take Android and strip out the Google-installed services (e.g. Amazon).

For Tesla, making electric cars in general a success will increase demand for electric infrastructure investment, and in turn, a robust electric infrastructure, along with cultural normality of electric cars, means increased demand for their own products.

Android really hasn't increased ad space all that much. If people use mobile more than desktop, the likely result is mobile is leading to decreased ad spaces, just from the mere fact that the screens are smaller. So if anything, it is a defense against a downward sloping trend.

Tesla want small slice of huge pie and not huge part of non existent one.

Can someone explain the appeal of electric cars to me? (Hear me out)

Currently, we power our vehicle fleet using gasoline. The stated appeal of electric cars, as I understand it, is less reliance on gasoline.

However, electric cars still require electricity. Currently, most of our electricity is powered by coal and other fossil fuels. While solar and renewables are increasing, they are not increasing very fast.

So it seems likely that any massive switch from gasoline to electric would entail a major increase in baseline electricity consumption. This would be powered either by more fossil fuels, or nuclear. Though the latter seems off the table in the West.

Possible advantages for electric:

1. Lower consumption of energy relative to gasoline (not sure if this is true) 2. More versatile, as electricity can come from multiple sources.

I'm not sure if #1 is true. #2 seems like a fairly small advantage, though it would be useful if oil became scarcer relative to coal.

Tesla has generated a lot of positive press. Am I missing something?

My intuition is that the electric car simply moves our consumption of energy, but does little to address our issue of mainly relying on non-renewables for energy.

(I wouldn't put much stock in any answer that emphasizes renewables, at least in the short term. They have not made a dent in our baseline power consumption, so I fail to see how adding electric cars would change much. In the long run, of course, electric cars offer the potential to power our vehicle fleet via renewables, assuming we can actually deploy them at scale [I'm skeptical on this point])

Cars stink. And put out pollution all through our urban space. They utilise a compact energy source but cannot utilise wind/solar power.

The performance of a Tesla is comparable to a Ferrari!

>the performance of a Tesla is comparable to a Ferrari! reply

No it is not. It's not even close, not even for the cheapest Ferrari. Teslas seem to be a fine car, but there is no need for this type of exaggeration.

You didn't google that at all did you.

http://wot.motortrend.com/teslas-musk-says-roadster-kicks-fe...

Tesla's are slower than most Ferraris but they are in the same league. When you are asking the question of why Tesla's are getting this hype the simple answer is because they are being compared to all sorts of other high performance cars.

> ... the electric car simply moves our consumption of energy

That's right. The nice thing about shifting the burden of energy production over to the electrical grid is that the energy becomes, in CS terms, an implementation detail: You can upgrade the environment impact of all the cars in an entire geographical area just by switching the underlying source of energy from, say, coal to wind or water.

That is already happening in many places. Many countries are already energy-sufficient based on renewables. Norway and Sweden get most of their power from hydro, for example, Denmark gets a lot from wind. Many countries (including Germany and Australia) are gearing up to become self-sufficient within 10-20 years. Germany was at 18% in 2010, planning to be at 66% in 2020.

As EVs increase in numbers and in mainstream acceptability, this will push companies to focus on the grid and on new energy sources. Right now, if everyone in the world switched to EVs, the grids would collapse.

Second point: The grid (or rather, its tributaries) is simply a better place to convert raw materials into electricity. The internal combustion engine is pretty efficient, but not particularly efficient compared to, say, a coal plant.

Lastly: EVs eliminate local emissions. That's a good thing.

Interesting, thanks. So it sounds like it will be somewhat useful if we fail to deploy renewable massively, and very useful if we do.

I think one of the greatest and least talked about advantages of the electric car can be illustrated by the following graphs

http://media.cns-snc.ca/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricit...

The website displays Ontario's (Province in Canada) hourly electricity output and the source of the electricity. Daily electricity demand fluctuates in Ontario by thousands of MW, so much so that houses in Ontario are now fitted with time of use meters, which charge variable rates depending on the time of the day. These meters are going to be installed in your neighborhood if they aren't already.

Now where do electric cars come into the mix? During the day, electricity consumption reaches a peak, and consumer prices are doubled from ~6c/KWh to ~12c/KWh. This isn't a cash grab, different facilities charge different rates for electricity generation depending on a bunch of different factors. With millions of electric cars, and with the aid of a "smart grid" that could learn to supply power to cars during the night and drain a small portion of power during the day, the massive fluctuations of electricity production through-out the day could be flattened out, and "dirty" backup plants could be taken offline. As a car owner, you could possibly be paid for you're car's storage capacity when electricity prices spike.

Another benefit of going electric, the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) is wasteful. ICEs work most efficiently at a specific rpm, which is hard to maintain when your car demands that torque to be dynamic, energy is lost at the transmission stage. ICEs need to be cooled down, the vast majority of energy is lost to heat. Take that same fuel but instead use it to power a steam turbine, and you capture much more thermal energy from the fuel. Electric motors also boast efficiency values upwards of 90%

And finally, electric engines when at a stop don't use electricity. I don't know the stats on this one but I would have to bet that billions of liters of gas are burned each year at stop lights, traffic, and at warm up. You can also regenerate energy through breaking in an electric car, instead of turning it straight to heat at the break pad.

Sure there are other points to be made, and sure my comment was probably disjointed, but as a mech eng, I lose sleep at how inefficient the ICE is. I dream of the day when battery density, and cost come down significantly and make it more affordable for a middle class family to own one of these cars.

That's a very good point about energy utilisation at off-peak times. I hadn't considered that. There's huge potential there even if the existing grid composition stays the same. Thanks.

There is a huge difference between energy production at an internal combustion engine and that at a power plant. Power plants are far far more efficient. Even if they do use fossil fuels. An ice wastes most of the fuel energy into heat. At the large scale of a power plant you can capture and use most heat and can perform much better exhaust cleaning.

Furthermore, most of the new power generation in the US is expected to be natural gas and solar and both of these are cleaner than gasoline.

I see. So even if a oil fired plant were created to power electric cars, more cars could be powered by the plant than by an equivalent amount of gasoline?

That is correct.

Everyone knows in tech, the first to market is the defined impression, and if Tesla keeps innovating they remain the titan of the industry. Example: carriers laughed at Steve Jobs when he wanted to introduce a pocket pc highly subsidized by the carrier, understandably the iphone was compared it to Palm Pilots and Blackberry held the market. The iphone was dubbed a "smartphone," by comparison it reflected it's user and the others whom did not own one to having... a "dumbphone." Even though I question Apple's future in a space they initially dominated, it is because lack of innovation. But I have invested my UI experience to iOS and money in apps and videos that will only play on iOS (always remove the drm -.-)....because, like Steve Jobs said "it just works." I don't believe Tesla will be like Google, unorganized and open sourced, but definitely like Apple and their App Store in comparison to tech. Side Note: I started with a Google G1 for Tmobile, tried the Evo4G, then because of coding had to get an iPhone 4 (ohh no closed-source)...judging by my excerpt, I guess I'm a fanboy now (just not big-headed or superior like the other ones :p). -quacker

Yes, that's why MySpace continues to define social networking, and AltaVista defines web search today.

Tesla wasn't even first with an all-electric car, for that matter. First mover advantage isn't nearly as strong in tech when you're looking forward. When you're looking back to explain dominance, survivorship bias clouds many people's analysis.

By defined impression an example is, when facebook came about, what was it compared to. MySpace failed to innovate other than for their bottom line. This is what I mean by a company must continually innovate on their product. Even Google does this through new products.

This may be too general of a statement, but Facebook fatigue, I believe, is spreading. Yet Facebook continues to innovate and acquire new products...Facebook would be better off creating a new method of social networking (is that too strong of a statement?).

Could someone explain to me what the big deal is with Tesla cars? I saw one yesterday parked by my office, and I peeked inside. It just seems like a typical luxury car that's electric. Kind of like the Porsche version of the Prius.

Why is it going to be huge?

Because it is a typical luxury car that's electric.

Because if Elon succeeds, Tesla is the future of the car industry.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5681695 for my explanation of why. (Which is just an application of a well-known theory from a well-known book.)

Because it's all-electric without the usual compromises, other than range (which is supposedly going to be solved in the next few years).

The Tesla BlueStar slated for release in 2016 or 2017 will be a $30,000 electric car that competes with Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. Because it's electric, the cost of fuel and maintenance is likely to be significantly lower that gas powered cars.

With the level of enthusiasm Consumer Reports showed for the Model S, and the lack of interest in building electric cars on the part of all the legacy automakers, I doubt there is going to be enough production capacity for 200+ mile range electric vehicles in 2017 for Tesla to keep up with demand if they price the car that cheaply.

Test drive one.

btilly made an excellent comment as well on how it fits the 'new tech eats the old tech' model. The upshot is that at some point in the future all cars will be electric, period. The reasons are pretty clear, its a superior way to build power trains if you can get the performance, range, and refueling issues solved. Tesla has, basically solved those problems for a market that is somewhat price insensitive.

What is funny is he is playing out of the 1901 Automobile handbook, where, if you recall, Standard Oil started putting up gas stations everywhere even when people didn't have cars. Because it encouraged people to get cars. Elon is putting up supercharging stations along popular driving routes because who doesn't want to drive to visit when the gas is "free" ?

Nobody who has heard his plan doesn't think that if successful he will be one of the worlds top automakers. The only question is whether or not he can pull it off. And as more and more hard problems are shown to be overcome, the more people believe he will. And the stock goes up because its really under priced for what, in the fullness of time, will be a 100B company :-)

> The reasons are pretty clear, its a superior way to build power trains if you can get the performance, range, and refueling issues solved.

Don't want to nitpick, but I think we're still a long way from "refueling issues" being solved world-wide in the near-term (15 to 25 years), only because electric power transmission is a damn-hard problem to solve at a global scale.

I remember reading an article linked from here a couple of months ago about how one big UK power company was handling the almost instantaneous switching on of millions of tea kettles after some BBC show had ended (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018560). Now imagine the same scenario in a country like Nigeria (population approaching 200 million), or Brazil, or Indonesia, but with cars instead of mundane tea kettles and with a not so top-notch electrical infrastructure instead of the mature UK power grid.

I do hope though that Tesla will end up being a $100+ billion company, if only to demonstrate that true innovation can still bring big financial gains in this day and age.

Nitpicking is good, it helps to clarify the conversation.

So my reference to refueling was around the time issue the GP mentioned, typical electric vehicles take a lot of time to transfer the same number of joules of energy that a gasoline car can transfer in a couple of minutes. That said, lets look a bit more at your concern.

You wrote : "only because electric power transmission is a damn-hard problem to solve at a global scale."

You are absolutely correct that a generalized solution for global power distribution of electricity is an unsolved problem. However you must be careful applying the general problem to a more specific case. Car charging has some nice features, one you can start and stop the electricity to it over the course of a charge and it won't notice (it will just take longer), its a constant load vs a varying load. These two aspects of it combine to make some creative solutions possible. One of them is fuel cell recharging.

Fuel cells can generate energy reliably from hydrocarbons but they really don't like rapid changes in load, they are most efficient when they can deliver a steady stream of current. So from an engineering perspective you could build a fuel cell based 'supercharger' type station, where you pour in 10 - 20 gallons of gasoline and plug in. Finesses both the long distance transmission of power and the availability. But its just one of a number of creative ways to fuel cars which want electricity rather than gasoline.

One of my favorite nuclear power 'hacks' was to build a 10GW nuclear plant in the middle of the desert, and next to it build a solar panel plant. Using using power (and heat) from the nuclear plant you melt silicon, refine it into crystals, smelt aluminum and build solar panels which you then truck off to places that need power. You are essentially putting the scary nuclear plant far from humans in a place they don't want to live anyway, and making a way to generate power which you then transport to places where you want power.

If you put enough solar panels in your village in Nairobi to charge up your Tesla truck over the course of a week then once a week used your truck to carry goods from the village into the city, I still think that would be a benefit to the village, but I cannot prove that.

And where would you find water for the nuclear power plant?

That is an excellent question! In the ideal case you would tap into a sub-surface aquifer, in the worst case you would initially import it (creating an artificial sub-surface aquifer :-)) Presumably for safety and economics reasons the system would run closed loop which would minimize losses. The challenge would be heat dump on the turbine supply, however given how cold it gets a night in the desert one might be able to finesse that with surface radiators connected thermally to the reservoirs.

In full disclosure, when the conversation originally came up (when discussing nuclear vs solar a while ago) we just did the basic math/materials analysis and did not do a full operational analysis on the idea.

"Test drive one."

But how many people care about how a car drives vs. what they have now?

I own a 911 but I can tell you my mother has no interest and no utility in that car nor does my father. When it just went in for service the dealer gave me a hybrid Cayenne as a loaner. That car has much more utility than the 911. But I have no interest in it at all. Cost of fuel has nothing to do with it either. It's to big (I've had that type of car before when I needed something with that kind of space and it comes in handy).

So my question is, of the things that Tesla is good for NOW (not in 5 or 10 years) what features does it have that the general public cares about that will drive sales? Because I fail to see that the "driving" experience will be one of them. I mean it's not like I get into the Porsche every day when I drive it and say "wow this is so super I'm so happy". After a bit you just get used to it.

That is something of a false choice (no offense to your Mom) unless you Mom currently drives a BMW 5 series sedan.

This question : "Of the things that Tesla is good for NOW (not in 5 or 10 years) what features does it have that the general public cares about that will drive sales?"

Is what is leading your thinking astray. The model S isn't designed for the "general public" any more than the BMW 5 series is designed for the "general public". A better question is this "How much of the $85,000 sport sedan market can Tesla capture with this offering?" And the answer to that question is "quite a bit."

Now since that is a pretty high margin business to be in (they are luxury cars after all) the follow on question is can they use the profits from that market to enter the $40,000 sport sedan market? Or the $40,000 small truck market? or any of a number of lower price points.

I think the answer is yes (of course), and I think that the challenge of those more cost effective markets are that people become more skeptical of 'new' cars and want 'established' cars. Which is why Lexus and Acura started with luxury cars and moved down market rather than the other way.

"How much of the $85,000 sport sedan market can Tesla capture with this offering?" And the answer to that question is "quite a bit."

I can only speak for myself but will add also my observation of other car buyers over the years.

The noise a vehicle makes matters. The fact that the Tesla makes no noise is a drawback to me and I suspect others in this category. I like the feedback and noise that an engine makes. (Think Harley Davidson and how that sounds and how that's a positive to buyers of that vehicle).

I don't have links or research to back this up. Just what I feel is the case.

Also one of the reason people buy cars in this category is because of things you can't put your finger on performance wise. It's a luxury product and there is a certain amount of head baggage that makes it attractive to you. There are people who won't buy anything but a 911 (no boxster, no cayman etc.) because it isn't the car they dreamed about as a kid (that of course will change with the aging population I'm just pointing it out behaviorally.)

That said it would be interesting to know of the buyers of the Tesla what car they owned before that car.

> The noise a vehicle makes matters. The fact that the Tesla makes no noise is a drawback to me and I suspect others in this category.

Meh, this is a minor problem. They could probably just slap some speakers on there to make some noise if this became a real concern. In any case, at lower prices, people are just interested in utility. And once silent cars become universal at lower price points (maybe in 20-30 years), they'll probably ban cars that do make noise, just to reduce noise pollution.

Right now, most people would already pay less for electricity than they do for gasoline. Theres (presumably) less need for constant servicing or oil refills, because an AC induction motor is such a ridiculously simple beast.

You can't think of any more reasons? First, that it is electric is at least interesting. 2nd, it just got the highest rating EVER from Consumer Reports. 3rd, it got that rating on the VERY FIRST CAR it ever designed and manufactured! 4th, the battery being built into the chassis lowering the center of gravity makes it very performant. 5th, no gears. 6th, seats 7. 7th, the entire area under the hood is empty for storage (again, because it is electric). 8th, free "fill ups". 9th, software in the car. 10th, and on and on.

It doesn't seem like you tried at all to understand the interest.

No gears? That seems incredible (and false).

There's one gear. So, yes, no gears.

I would classify one as more than none.

When I was 7 I got my first "bmx bike". It was awesome. When I turned 12 I got a "mountain bike" with 18!! Gears. I went from a bike with no gears to one with 18.

I think general usage of the term means that it fits Tesla -- even I f it's not technically correct

When you have electric motors that produce torque at any RPM, then as long as you can manufacture a motor to spin fast enough, you don't need gears.

The Model S is direct drive... so no gears.

So we'll just ignore that one gear in the box and the several that make up the open differential?

You could have a direct drive motor at each wheel. I'm not sure if the Tesla does this but it's one possibility.

Tesla did previously build the Roadster, although the Roadster was to some extent based upon the Elise.

Like I said 3 months ago (when the stock was at $34): I'm betting on Elon! http://go.DanielOdio.com/elon

"Betting" is the operative word here. I think Elon is going to be successful, but that doesn't mean I want to gamble on TSLA stock. In other words, TSLA is not an "investment" if you realize you are essentially betting on some future outcome that is far from certain. It's a gamble. It would be great if people made this distinction (not saying you don't)

Yeah agreed; in my blog post & comments I talk about how the stock could definitely go to $0 if the company missteps. But then again, after driving a Model S, I believe it's the best car out there, so as long as the company executes well I'm very bullish on the stock, especial in the medium to long term ( >1 year).

Tesla's market cap is currently one and a half times Fiat's. I know it's a rough measure, but that seems a bit excessive.

Stock prices are generally based on the expected future profitability of a company. Tesla's expectations are vastly higher than Fiat...

On the other hand, the stock of every legacy automaker could go to $0 if Tesla is successful and the legacy automakers fail to transition to building electric cars (or even just fail to shed the obnoxious dealerships).

And the stock of every electric power distribution monopoly could go to $0 if solar panels and batteries get cheap enough that we don't need the grid anymore.

All investments are gambling to at least some extent.

So is crossing the street. But you don't call this gambling.

Many investments are purchasing the rights to future fairly predictable cash flows. Labeling these as gambles dilutes the meaning of the word.

I bought several thousand shares at $17. Watching it go to almost $80/share has been surreal.

Congrats on a nice gain. You could buy a Model S with your profits.

I bought a Chevy Volt last year. Have really enjoyed driving it so far. Electric cars have really taken off in the past year in Silicon Valley. I see multiple Tesla's, Leafs and Volts every time I take a drive now.

While it was a good buy then, it's important to keep in mind that it's either in the middle of, or toward the tail end of a short squeeze, so is likely trading above the present fundamental value of the company. I expect it will fall quite a bit in the short term, though it's probably a good long term buy still. There were so many short positions in part because the market cap is way off for Tesla as a car company; the value of Tesla is currently about 85% of the value of Mazda, but Mazda sells many more cars much more profitably. Of course, the majority of the price is all in the expected present value of the future cash flows.

There is a Tesla store, in the mall right down the hall from the apple store my brother works. It looks like an apple store but with really big ithings.

If Tesla becomes a car company of similar size to, say, Ford, what will its stock price be?

Ford's market cap is 55B. TSLA's current market cap is ~9B at a stock price of ~$77. If TSLA's market cap were 55B (~6x greater), then, assuming no stock splits, its stock price would be $462/share.

Lost me when said iPad was the cheapest tablet you could buy.

Such a pointless title, a real rarity (especially on HN).

I can't wait until the day everyone drives an electric car. I can't believe after 100 years, we still have these gas guzzling, pollution spewing dinosaurs... These huge conglomerate oil companies are going to end up ruining us all. The auto manufacturers need to look to the future before they become obsolete. Tesla, I salute you!

> The auto manufacturers need to look to the future before they become obsolete.

No they don't, the economics of cars is doing exactly what it should. The old dogs don't react fast enough so new tech and ideas like Tesla take over.

It is good to have corporate turnover of businesses before they can concentrate power and influence in their niche sphere to capture markets. In the US, the downsizing of Chrysler brings GM / Ford into a duopoly after having bought dozens of brands over the last half century. They desperately needed some competition.

Hate to break it to you, but the only thing that will happen is that more plants will be converted to burning oil. You won't have car exhaust, but you'll end up burning fossil fuels to power your vehicle all the same.

A cool tshirt of the original Tesla in New York: http://teespring.com/tesla

Reply on news.ycombinator.com