Tesla Achilles Heel

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Battery weight and charge time are still prime issues. Batteries with 10 minute charge times are in the works but current charging stations can't handle that. It is expected that batteries with 390 mile capacity and 10 minute charge time might be doable within a few years. Now is not the time to purchase an EV unless you believe in expendables. They are talking about recycling vehicle and battery after 13 years. My GEO Prism is 2x that age, still delivers 30-40 mpg and has a street value of less than $1K. There's no EV in my future.
 
The NYT is after Tesla for promising driverless-car abilities that aren't here yet.

One bad solder joint in these 4000 lb vehicles & pedestrians gonna' be toast & Mr. Musk is not liable.
 
They do recommend that you pay attention.

There are, cord cooling tech. that allows for rapid short term charging, however, it also debilitates the present predominate battery structure.
 
68bucks said:
That was my thought too. I'm a big race fan and a few years ago the started the Formula E series. First time I saw a race I thought cool they will develop a lot of technology from this. Waited for the first pit stop, I thought they would have quick swap batteries of some sort. Big disappointment, the drive just changed cars. Gotta start somewhere I suppose.
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That is the answer! The government can take over vehicle ownership and we just exchange them when battery reaches the minimum level. All vehicles can be the same design (as it is with communist housing projects). NASCAR can be eliminated saving a lot of energy.
 
I believe Israel had a EV design that used interchangeable batteries that allowed for a quick swap. Tesla toyed with it for a while. The way they are building the batteries into the car won't allow for that today. I think private enterprise is the way to go. Government housing worked so well (that's sarcasm BTW).
 
Sparky617 said:
I believe Israel had a EV design that used interchangeable batteries that allowed for a quick swap. Tesla toyed with it for a while. The way they are building the batteries into the car won't allow for that today. I think private enterprise is the way to go. Government housing worked so well (that's sarcasm BTW).
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My post was sarcasm as well. I recall a bumper sticker from decades ago,

IF YOU LIKE OUR POSTAL SERVICE YOU WILL LOVE OUR NATIONAL HEALTH CARE
 
My lost flip phone was found & the provider did nothing what they seemed to say they would do & my choice now is to keep the thing & use up the money or drive a roofing nail thru the heart of this Satanic Device after I cook it with my propane torch & run it thru my table saw with my diamond blade mounted.

But I might take out the battery first.

And a woman leaving the market looked at me in a very appealing way. It's hard to put a dollar value on that. :)
 
Guzzle said:
My lost flip phone was found & the provider did nothing what they seemed to say they would do & my choice now is to keep the thing & use up the money or drive a roofing nail thru the heart of this Satanic Device after I cook it with my propane torch & run it thru my table saw with my diamond blade mounted.

But I might take out the battery first.

And a woman leaving the market looked at me in a very appealing way. It's hard to put a dollar value on that. :)
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We went to a concert last week and the only option for tickets was on the app. No printouts, no physical tickets. It is becoming a necessity of modern life to have a smart phone. We traded in the smart phone my daughter and nieces got my now 90 year old FIL and opted for a flip phone. He'd touch the screen in the wrong place and close whatever app he was in, it was an exercise in frustration. It would be handy if he could work a smart phone so he could use UBER when my wife can't transport him to an appointment. His senior apartment complex will take him if it is scheduled on the "right" day.
 
We're being played. :(
And it's too late for me to set up something in the Alaskan wilderness. :)

Some restaurants around here will not take paper money, even tho it is "legal tender for all debts public & private", etc.

The phone for now is wrapped in tin foil, which should make inaccessible via the air waves, it's my own ungrounded Faraday Cage.
 
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I haven't fact checked this one:

A single Tesla battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. At this rate, over the next thirty years we will need to mine more mineral ores than humans have extracted over the last 70,000 years.​
 
I wouldn't be surprised mineral extraction is always a high volume to mineral process. Wonder how much dirt gets moved to make a wedding ring? I bet 90% of the ore mined in the last 70,000 years happened in the last few hundred though so it seems a bit misleading. You could say the last 100,000 year and be the same thing. Smelting and extraction has been around for a long time but the volume was minute buy modern standards. I'm interested in how the recycling of those materials evolves, and it will. Too much money on the table not to.
 
There are future plans for recycling lithium batteries for use in home systems however what happens when those reach their end of life? Is yet another recycling feasible and/or economically feasible? Meanwhile we plow blindly ahead ahead assuming some major breakthrough will come. And while we are plowing ahead many small lithium batteries are already hitting the landfills along with their predecessors.

It can only be with constant scrutinization that we’ll be able to achieve a more sustainable future. Are the politicians bright enough to understand this?
 
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The whole push for electric vehicles is by the people that have no idea what they are talking about. Every single part of the electric vehicle INCLUDING the electricity (80%) is produced by fossil fuels.

As Fox Radio and former NYC Cabbie Jimmy Failla pointed out, the average electric car costs $60K, so that's $820 a month for 6 years at 4% interest... That doesn't include the same maint costs, the cost of electricity at the charger stations, the cost of the charger for the house, the 240 wiring for the house, an upgraded panel for the house etc, etc, etc...

So, with the average consumer SAVING an average of $80 on gas a month, that $60K car by itself would take 750 months or 62.5 YEARS of driving to become a wash on the fuel savings. It makes ZERO sense.

Then there's the battery nightmare which is completely against what the environmentalists claim they are against, then there is the wind farm nightmare that is completely against what the environmentalists claim they are against... Then Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline, but trucks and trains pollute the environment while delivering oil, while a pipeline just sits there.

And the Dems want to end all drilling, but he blames fuel prices on Putin.

Yeah, okay.
 
Spicoli43 said:
The whole push for electric vehicles is by the people that have no idea what they are talking about. Every single part of the electric vehicle INCLUDING the electricity (80%) is produced by fossil fuels.

As Fox Radio and former NYC Cabbie Jimmy Failla pointed out, the average electric car costs $60K, so that's $820 a month for 6 years at 4% interest... That doesn't include the same maint costs, the cost of electricity at the charger stations, the cost of the charger for the house, the 240 wiring for the house, an upgraded panel for the house etc, etc, etc...

So, with the average consumer SAVING an average of $80 on gas a month, that $60K car by itself would take 750 months or 62.5 YEARS of driving to become a wash on the fuel savings. It makes ZERO sense.

Then there's the battery nightmare which is completely against what the environmentalists claim they are against, then there is the wind farm nightmare that is completely against what the environmentalists claim they are against... Then Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline, but trucks and trains pollute the environment while delivering oil, while a pipeline just sits there.

And the Dems want to end all drilling, but he blames fuel prices on Putin.

Yeah, okay.
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According to KBB the average price of an EV is about $10,000 more than a ICE car. So based on your $80 a month that's 10.4 years based on fuel only. Maintenance is 30-50% less on an EV so there is savings there. Equipment like chargers and such are one time expenditures and could possibly ad value to a home. It's not automatic to assume you need a new panel. Average installation of a level 2 charger is around $2000 so that would add another couple years on the payback based solely on fuel savings. You could just use level 1 charging and save that cost though most people would not like the slow charging, but it's an option. There is no offset in the numbers for tax savings or incentives. If you have a solar or wind system it might save you a lot of money.
I think most people that are buying EVs are just as interested in reducing emissions as saving a buck. When you say EVs make zero sense that could apply on a pure economic basis today but assumes that there will be no improvement in costs over time. I bet when the automobile was first introduced it was considered only suitable for the rich. I bet it cost a lot more to operate than a horse. I bet it's still cheaper to operate a horse so maybe we should eliminate all automobiles. A lot of innovation starts more expensive than existing technology. If that was the litmus test for whether a new technology is good or bad we wouldn't have a lot of the things we have. Remember when a VHS player cost $600? It all has to start somewhere.

All that said I think the current administration is trying to make the transition from fossil fuels too quickly. You can't just flip a switch and make it so but in the long haul it will/has to happen.
 
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