Tesla motors

[black_demon69]

just thought this was cool

http://www.teslamotors.com/

about $114,000 for the performance model with all the options

then i was thinking how cool it would be to put a dual motor drive system into a ranger and make it all electric like the cars listed on the above site. just dreaming though

 

[RonD]

One of the first cars was a 4 wheel drive electric car, each wheel hub was an electric motor, and it was built by................Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the Porsche company.

Ferdinand Porsche designed and built a four-wheel-driven electric vehicle for the k. u. k. Hofwagenfabrik Ludwig Lohner & Co. at Vienna in 1899, presented to the public during the 1900 World Exhibition at Paris. An electric hub motor at each wheel powered the vehicle.

Battery technology is the hold up on electric vehicles, not performance or multi-wheel drive, the range in high demand use is limited, i.e. 4 wheeling, wouldn't want to get stuck in the bush without a long extension cord, lol.

Also Batteries are heavy and they are costly to replace, Tesla sells optional pre-paid battery replacement with new cars for less than current replacement price, they are betting on the price dropping by the time replacement is needed.
The current $11,000 hit to replace batteries is a hard one to swallow all at once, makes the $3,000-$4,000 for a replacement gas engine seems almost reasonable, almost, lol.

 

[black_demon69]

One of the first cars was a 4 wheel drive electric car, each wheel hub was an electric motor, and it was built by................Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the Porsche company.



Battery technology is the hold up on electric vehicles, not performance or multi-wheel drive, the range in high demand use is limited, i.e. 4 wheeling, wouldn't want to get stuck in the bush without a long extension cord, lol.

Also Batteries are heavy and they are costly to replace, Tesla sells optional pre-paid battery replacement with new cars for less than current replacement price, they are betting on the price dropping by the time replacement is needed.
The current $11,000 hit to replace batteries is a hard one to swallow all at once, makes the $3,000-$4,000 for a replacement gas engine seems almost reasonable, almost, lol.

more then anything i think the concept is cool. and before electric 4x4 would be practical you would have to develop better solar panels for charging in the bush. personally i think hydrogen is the better way to go for fuel because batteries are toxic and will create a different kind of polution and problems of disposal where as hydrogen can be pulled from water and when it burns all you get is steam.

 

[tac1015]

stupid car, don't believe any of the mileage claims. What happens if its out of power, takes 4 to 8 hours to recharge, if you recharge it in the fast mode you shorten battery life, and whats the resale on a car like that going to be, lose 80% in 4 years? Might be fast might be cool, but most of the power made in the US is still made with coal, so its really a coal powered car. The only reason to buy a car like this is to impress your friends so the rest of the sheepole think you are saving the planet, but what no one tells you that the electric car creates make more pollution to build than the gas car, so how are you really saving the planet.

 

[hoosier1104]

My BS is Electronics and Communications Engineering and with had several conversations in class about this in class. I designed and built a solar powered/charging RC car. The instructor was working on his Ph.D. in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. Some good points were made as well as pit falls.

The best of both worlds is a Hybrid. To switch over from gas to electric in this application takes a lot of R&D.

 

[RonD]

Well the facts are pretty simple.
If it isn't a renewable resource you won't be using it to power anything 100 years from now.

The million plus year old fuel tank, oil, natural gas and coal, will eventually run dry, that's just the way it is.
But for now it is the most practical(read cheapest, lol) way to power our world.

And we are, if nothing else, practical(read cheap, again).

Alternatives are, and should be, tested because we will need them one day, the tank will run dry.

Outside of nuclear and tidal power generation pretty much all power on the planet comes from the Sun, solar power even made the million plus year old fuel in the tank.
Direct solar isn't very practical, yet.
Hydro-electic is, but is limited in many areas.
Wind power is also limited to certain areas.
Bio-fuel looks good but we have the issue that it is in direct competition with people wanting to eat, starve a child so you can drive to the store? tough call? shouldn't be
Bio-fuel made from non-consumable plants and animals is possible if not practical yet.
All the above are "solar powered".

Nuclear...........well it has issues, lol.
Tidal is very limited to specific areas, but can be used.


Electric power is a renewable power source, some of the methods to generate electrical power is not, so saying electrical powered cars are good or bad from a renewable stand point is moot, they are fine.

Electric motors are also much more powerful and efficient than gas or diesel motors, current and past(since 1914) diesel locomotives use electric motors to turn the wheels, the diesel engine turns a generator/alternator to power the electric motors, there is no mechanical connection between diesel engine and the wheels, so a direct hybrid setup.

Car/truck hybrids add batteries to the mix, and are probably the best solution to come in the near future for the longer range driving people are used to.
You still have multi-moving parts internal combustion engine, which is bad, but no transmission which is good, and much better performance from electric motor(s) .
The batteries....well hopefully there will be a break-through on that front, because as it stands now that is the weak point for mobile electric power.


Hydrogen Fuel cells are a bad direction IMO, while the party line of creating hydrogen from splitting H2O(water) reads well, it isn't practical from a power use stand point, current hydrogen production comes from oil and natural gas, so............not renewable.

 

[The_Epsicle]

Well the facts are pretty simple.
If it isn't a renewable resource you won't be using it to power anything 100 years from now.

The million plus year old fuel tank, oil, natural gas and coal, will eventually run dry, that's just the way it is.

Sure it will eventually run dry since there's only so much oil in the world, but where do you get this 100 years stuff? There are 53 years of oil left in the world if you go by proved reserves which is the amount of oil that drilling companies believe they can pull out of the ground while still turning a profit, but that is assuming our production cost will remain the same for the next 53 years, the number of production rigs will remain the same as well, and that the demand(and by relation the price) will remain the same as well. It's a misleading statistic because people assume that is all the oil we have left even though it is just a current economic restriction, it is so misleading that in 1981 during the oil crisis we thought that the entire world would run out of oil by 2012, obviously this was not the case. If you include the economically viable reserves then we have somewhere between 53 and 250 years of crude oil remaining, when you include the technically recoverable deposits which are not currently viable due to the cost of recovery right now, then that number obviously gets larger. Then there is a bunch of oil leftover which we cannot physically recover, but I assume by the time the 250+ years have passed that we will have figured out how to recover a good portion of it. My point is oil will run dry eventually, but we won't have to worry about that for at least 250 years.

 

[RonD]

I was speaking more to the technology than the time.
Only a fool counts on using the last bit of a non-renewable resource, and we are not fools, lol, well generally, I myself am a fool but happy, people are practical so as the gas prices goes up, their practical side will come out.
And I stand by the 100 years, I doubt you will be able to buy a new 2115 gasoline only or diesel only vehicle, no one will make them.

And my money is on the hybrid, diesel-electric version, for now anyway, technology changes.

 

[The_Epsicle]

I was speaking more to the technology than the time.
Only a fool counts on using the last bit of a non-renewable resource, and we are not fools, lol, well generally, I myself am a fool but happy, people are practical so as the gas prices goes up, their practical side will come out.
And I stand by the 100 years, I doubt you will be able to buy a new 2115 gasoline only or diesel only vehicle, no one will make them.

And my money is on the hybrid, diesel-electric version, for now anyway, technology changes.

If you're talking about the technology then I agree with you, I want my hovercar dammit! Though I doubt it will be driven by the amount of crude we could drill, I was using my 250 years as a guestimate on the low end of when we would see those effects since that is the end of the reserves that are economically viable right now, my real guess is anywhere from 250 - 750 years when we will actually run out and that's only based on the reserves we know about right now. Too many other factors to consider with oil, I'd like to see something that has more of a stable price but that doesn't seem to exist right now.

But anyway...

I like Tesla's but I don't believe the range on them, and where in the world do you charge them if you don't live in a megalopolis like New York? The battery's are what hold them up but Stanford has some promising research on that front.

My dad has been joking with me and my brother that he's going to by an Elio. The only problems with Elio's is that you have to have a motorcycle license in Iowa since they have less than four wheels.

 

[black_demon69]

as i said i like the concept but also believe that the current battery technology is not up to the task. Nor is our ability to recycle 100% of the chemicals in a battery for re use in new battery's. so that leaves us with the problem of disposal..

 

[tac1015]

Anyone ever think that oil is a renewable source of energy? The earth produces oil , don't know how , don't think any really does either , but it makes it. Do you think that dinosaurs made there way down into the earths crust 5 miles , 7 miles and that so many of them died there that they turned to oil, or that plants so how were buried so deep to change into oil? The earth make oil , only natures god can tell you why but its renewable, and still the best source for hydo-carbon chains long enough to make energy.

 

[AllanD]

Battery technology is the rub with electric cars,

Fuel cells that produce electricity directly from hydrogen also have some issues
you cannot shut them down completely and easily restart them, so they essentially have to be left running at low level even when you aren't driving

So what you do is set up the car to power your house, in essence the reverse of charging your electric car.

the other problem is using gaseous hydrogen doesn't work

You need a tank the size of a full size truck bed at any reasonable pressure to
have enough range to drive to work daily for a week.

not to mention that compressing hydrogen to 2000psi is very work intensive.
and hydrogen at 2000 psi leaks right through the walls of the tank you keep it in, so Liquid(cryogenic) hydrogen is a better solution the fact that it must boil away to keep the rest cool couples nicely with the needs of fuel cells...

the biggest problem with hydrogen is that burning it will NEVER produce as much energy as it takes to split it from oxygen in the water molecule.
and the energy to compress it into a cylinder or chill it to liquid is a complete loss.. unless the energy to separate it and compress or cool it is nearly free

free energy... Mr Fusion home energy reactor in your garage?


Or if you want the less Science Fiction approach...

a Liquid Floride Salt Thorium Reactor (a type of low pressure reactor that burns nuclear waste mixed with thorium and breeds U233 for a fast fission reaction) at every gas station.

I think fusion is almost as big a pipe dream as hydrogen stations on every corner, so...

 

[hoosier1104]

I wonder how far off natural gas would be; however, rolling around with a bomb strapped to your vehicle is less than ideal.

 

[stmitch]

I wonder how far off natural gas would be; however, rolling around with a bomb strapped to your vehicle is less than ideal.

Natural gas is already here. It's mostly in commercial applications like trucks and buses because it's significantly cheaper than diesel fuel. The tanks are no more likely to be a "bomb" than the tank of gasoline in most vehicles. As diesel emissions regs continue to tighten, and the NG refueling infrastructure grows, it will become even more common.
Some of the new CNG/LNG engines coming out in the next 12-18 months have a carbon footprint similar to electric vehicles after you consider the loosely-regulated powerplant that produces the electricity for the "clean" all-electric vehicle. Natural gas isnt perfect, but I think it will be the next step away from traditional fossil fuels.