No wonder the oil industry calls it “Dangerous Technology”.
Wired:
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced today that the all-electric Model S sedan now comes with “Ludicrous Mode,” which will send the four-door sedan from 0 to 60 mph in a shockingly quick 2.8 seconds. That’s supercar territory, and it makes “Insane Mode,” introduced last fall and good for a 0 to 60 time of 3.2 seconds, seem utterly lame.
“Ludicrous mode” comes as part of a new version of the Model S, the P90D. The name represents an upgraded battery pack, form 85 to 90 kWh, which Tesla says is good for an extra 15 miles of range—putting the grand total at 300 miles, if you stick to 65 mph.
The boost in acceleration doesn’t actually come from the extra battery power, it’s the upside of what Musk calls “fairly advanced and exotic electronics.” To date, the car’s acceleration has been capped by how much current can be safely drawn from the battery, about 1,300 amps. Go much higher than that, and the fuse can melt. Tesla’s developed a new fuse that uses electronics and its own tiny lithium ion battery to detect when it will melt, and cut power if necessary. That lets you build in less of a margin of error, and push the amps higher.
Along with a switch from steel to superalloy inconel for the main pack contractor, that lets the battery fire out 1,500 amps of power. More power, more speed.
You know, the Tesla S makes for a pretty good model for what the benefits of one possible version of what our energy future might be.
Forget about the price of the car for a moment. The Tesla S represents an energy future that, for the average person, represents a huge increase in personal luxury, comfort, freedom, performance, entertainment, cost effectiveness and a huge decrease in energy usage, carbon footprint and the personal guilt that accompanies them.
It represents a big increase in the standard of living for almost every driver on the road. The opposite of a what many people feel should be our energy future: a resignation to a bleak existence where using less energy is the highest virtue. This despite the fact that we are literally bathed in titanic amount of clean free energy.
The car has a greatly reduced maintenance factor compared to a car with an internal combustion engine. It actually uses far fewer calories to drive any given distance than an ICE auto, because electric motors are much less wasteful of calories than an ICE. This is also true of many renewable technologies as well – fewer moving parts; longer useful lifespans; no associated costs of mining, processing, and moving fuel.
We could all be enjoying a Tesla S future, where clean ultra-low-cost electricity powered our lives; lives of greater comfort, efficiency, safety, and health than we enjoy even now.
OK, let’s address the cost of that Tesla. Imagine the government bought every one for every household. Each Tesla would only cost the government what that household would have spent of gasoline for five to seven years anyway. And the Tesla might last eight years before it need to be replaced.
And, the simple act of giving everyone a Tesla, would solve AGW, because no more CO2 would be going into the atmosphere. Saving the world hundreds of trillions of dollars in adaptation costs. All for the cost of five to seven years worth of annual fossil fuel costs.
Sorry, should be:
“OK, let’s address the cost of that Tesla. Imagine the government bought one for every household. Each Tesla would only cost the government what that household would have spent anyway on gasoline for five to seven years. And that Tesla might well last eighty years before it need to be replaced.”
Has GB been consuming some mind-altering substance so early in the day?
“Imagine the government bought one for every household”, he says. OK, let’s do that.
“Each Tesla would only cost the government what that household would have spent anyway on gasoline for five to seven years”.
“And that Tesla might well last eighty years before it need to be replaced.
Since the average household spends about $2000. per year and the Tesla S costs $80,000, somebody is guilty of some “whacky math” here. And EIGHTY years? GB should have “corrected” the entire comment, because it is so full of whacky logic in addition to the whacky math that it makes me think he’s really joking (if he’s not drunk, that is).
Down, dog, down! That’s a good dog. 🙂
The cost to build us a new 100% renewable energy system in the U.S. is, by my rough calculations (based on Jacobsen & Delucchi), between $6 to 10 trillion. Since we spend `$1.5 trillion every year on fossil fuels, it would only cost the nation about 5 to 7 years of fossil fuel spending (gasoline in the Tesla analogy) to build that system.
PV panels may well last eighty years before they degrade enough to warrant replacement according to some reports I have seen on efficiency losses per year. Granted, this might be optimistic to apply to all the different renewable energy subsystems, but….. poetic license.
You yourself have said that even nuclear power plants would have 60 years+ of useful lifespan. Seems reasonable to assume that CSP plants would enjoy at least the same. Wind turbines look to be needing replacement of expensive components much more often, but I am no expert. Tidal systems, I would guess, would corrode out even more often – but who knows – it is a nascent tech, and the right materiels might make them very long lived indeed – who knows.
And my drunk comments are made at night, not the early pm’s.
This reply of yours has little or nothing to do with my comment, which was about your whacky math on the Tesla “analogy”, and not at all on this other pie-in-the-sky stuff you’re so fond of.
Now I am worried—-you say drunk stuff when you’re not drunk? Are you seriously hungover instead?
Sober up and try to focus—-it might make your comments more sensible and understandable—(who knows?)
The “Tesla” is a metaphor for a new energy system, DOG. It is NOT an actual car. You know, with clowns coming out of it.
WHAT? A Tesla is not a car but a METAPHOR?
(And the only clown car I’ve seen that was not in a circus or parade is a certain 12-year-old G35 in Vermont—-it has only a single clown coming out of it).
It sure sounds crazy but a deeper look shows that it’s feasible.
The best single year for auto sales in America was 16 million in 2007.
Let’s say the government decides to give a stock S70D to every working citizen who makes from $20k – $60k which is about 60 million people and the goal is to get it done in 10 years or 6 million new cars per year.
Let’s assume no cost reduction due to economy of scale, so that’s $450 billion a year.
First question – could they find the money. Short answer – YES.
Moving healthcare to a Medicare-for-all system where the per-capita spending is 50% greater than Germany or $7500/ person / year would divert $480 billion annually. Another $250 billion could be found by cutting military spending to 1999 levels.
So we’re already flush with theoretical cash.
Let’s assume avg miles driven is 25,000 miles per year at 2.75 miles / kWh.
So the 1st 6,000,000 new Teslas will need 55 TWh / yr which is only an additional 1.2% of current consumption of electricity.
Those 6 mil drivers will not be buying gas so they’ll pocket an extra $12 billion but if they have to pay for electricity at 20 cents / kWh, it’s a wash.
Aluminum refining is very energy-intensive so may have to cut back or eliminate it and go with steel and CFRP.
BIG question mark? Batteries, of course.
Feasible? Have you been drinking the same stuff as Gingerbaker? Moonshine made from fermented 100% pure Vermont Maple Syrup? (I wonder if anyone has ever attempted that?).
“Giving” a car to everyone in the middle class (AKA “the moochers”) is something the Repugnants would agree to? On top of food stamps and free cell phones? Moving healthcare to a Medicare-for-all system and cutting military spending to 1999 levels is “feasible”?. In the USA of 2015? LOL.
Glad to see you haven’t completely lost touch with reality, though, with—-“BIG question mark? Batteries, of course”. I have faith in Lord Elon of Musk, who will build battery factories that cover the whole state of Nevada in order to meet the demand. (And if that’s not enough, he can get his Mars colonies to make them—-we will need a new TPP for that—Trans Planetary Partnership—-wouldn’t want to stifle the profiteers).
I’m not addressing the political landscape, that’s FUBAR.
But it’s mind-boggling to realize what could be done otherwise with the wasteful expenditure on the military and healthcare.
And I was very conservative with my numbers. The military as it existed in 1999 was already bloated and Germany’s healthcare runs quite well on the $5000 per capita they spend and using single-payer to reduce America’s spending to that level would save $1.3 T per year.
I didn’t consider raising taxes on the well-to-do or corporations, or chopping subsidies of any kind. And yet I could find enough money to give tens of millions a luxury car.
FYI, Vermont Spirits has been making a maple syrup vodka for 2 decades.
If it’s got carbs, someone will find a way to make hooch.
It’s true that what you suggest would be “feasible” $$$$-wise IF the political landscape was not FUBAR. But since it is, you’re engaged in wishful thinking. Maybe we’ll get lucky and turn the politics around before it’s too late—-I for one will not hold my breath while waiting.
“If it’s got carbs, someone will find a way to make hooch” is certainly true, as those in prisons and the military can attest, to say nothing of the fuel ethanol indfustry.
Right. Don’t talk about anything which DOG thinks is politically difficult, even if it makes financial sense. Got it.
BTW, you notice that some countries are actually talking about simply giving everyone enough money to live on? I wouldn’t have heard about here, of course, but I was traveling through there, and evidently, it is OK to talk about it there)
I even heard – no, this can’t be true, can it? – that some Democrats and progressives are actually talking about improving Social Security! The fools!! Don’t they realize that in the U.S. you can pass laws that the Republicans like?!? Why…. it’s ludicrous!
Uh, Mrs’ Gingerbaker? Or children of Gingerbaker? Or whoever is the “keeper” of Gingerbaker?
Somebody needs to get him away from the computer and sobered up. He is starting to Gish Gallop on us with this string of inanities. Take him out for a walk or for a boat ride on Lake Champlain. Coffee may help too.
Ludicrous is exactly the right name for this new “mode”. Musk and his marketing “genius” (and Mars ideas) are ludicrous as well.
Has anyone done the math? 1500 FREAKING Amps at 375 Volts is 562,500 W. In two hours, that would be more electricity than a typical household uses in a year.
Keep in mind that “—putting the grand total at 300 miles, if you stick to 65 mph” is the distance you’ll travel at the average consumption of ~300 W per mile (90,000 W divided by 300 W per mile).
If one takes advantage of “ludicrous mode” very often, they can expect to visit the charging station way more often. And anyone who goes from 0-60 in 2.8 seconds better have damn good brakes, because all those folks who drive out in front of them, and the kids on bikes, and all those little old ladies who stepped off the curb after looking for cars approaching at reasonable rates of speed are going to be in their way.
The Tesla S is indeed “dangerous technology”—the only good I see coming from it is that it may get some of the rich into electric cars, and that may modify their thinking enough to incline them to put some of their dirty money into renewables.
Oh, c’mon. If you drive a Tesla you don’t need to worry about grandmothers on bicycles or whatever fevered phantasmagorical chimera you are obsessing about today*. Those grandmas need to worry about being sued for ruining the Corinthian leather-rich hand-rubbed paint job. All criticism of my Tesla is what is ludicrous here.
* Imagine Koch brothers-sponsored NASA Mars missions obliterating child-juggling grandmothers on unicycles in space.
The battery pack in those Tesla holds 90 kWhs so you couldn’t keep up that power draw for 2 hrs no matter what. And that’s for (ludicrous) acceleration not constant cruising.
Tesla claims a 240 mile range at 75 mph for the 85 kWh models which works out to 30 kW/ 40 HP average power.
Personal transportation uses a lot of power compared to powering households, which we would all know if we ran our homes off individual diesel generators instead of the grid.
Correct. I was trying to put that rate of power usage into every day terms that people could relate to. Another way to look at it is that the average family uses ~900 kWh per month, or about what 10 charges for the Tesla would take.
If you COULD keep up that (ludicrous) power draw until you exhausted the battery (without something melting down or blowing up or you had to stop because you hit something that didn’t see you coming), it would be 90 kW divided by the 562.5 kW = .16—-gone in less than 10 minutes. Driving at a normal speed, the battery charge would last 4-5 hours.
It would also help to put the relative wastefulness of a large number of ICE vehicles into perspective.
It takes 90 kW to accelerate 3000 lb from a standstill to 60 mph, not counting drag & friction. Hundreds of car models have been capable of this feat for 20+ years, producing enough power to run 20 homes each – at barely 25% efficiency.
At least hybrids & EV recapture some of that excess when braking rather than producing more wasted heat.
1) Musk is a Silicon Valley guy, and it is well understood around here that many technologies start expensive, and then cost-volume-manufacturing+technology bring costs down.
2) Once upon a time, computers of far less performance and storage than a low-end iPhone cost $Ms and occupied floors of large buildings. Visit the Computer History Museum and look at the model of a SAGE in front of a small part of one.as per BMW, and into trucks with appropriate use patterns. (Long-distance will take a while.)
3) Short-distance urban personal transport: small self-driving vehicles like Google prototypes + ~Uber and stop chewing up so much space and cost for cars that mostly sit there. Among other things, Beijing really needs EVs like this.
I’ve already been in 1/2 a dozen flamewars over this announcement and I think that enough is enough for “ludicrous” performance.
I’m committed to my next car being an EV, whether new or 2ndhand.
While I didn’t think much of the original Volt, the 2016 model is appealing as is the Bolt BEV.
I applaud the work Elon & Tesla have done to bring EVs to the fore of every discussion about cars and the spur they’ve put to Detroit & Deutschland.
But after reviewing performance numbers of various cars and the fines & penalties in several countries, states or provinces for excessive speed, it’s even more clear that our cars & our laws are working at cross-purposes.
Safety, comfort, efficiency and economy should be the goal; we’ve mastered performance. If you absolutely must drive at 100 mph & get to that speed in as short a time as possible, make your case to the legislators, not the automakers.
Yeah! Nobody needs any car that is faster than what Morin or DOG feels is reasonable! And get offa dare lawns!
When I was in college, I owned a Morgan Plus 4 with a TR-3 engine. On occasion I drove it near its top speed of 100+ mph and even raced with the younger NJ State Troopers in the wee hours when no one was around—many of them were wild and crazy car nuts and loved to do that when no one was looking—they always followed so that it looked like they were chasing me.
I have since grown up (unlike some G35 owners we know), and now only occasionally drive at 80 to 90 mph on I-95 on the way to and from NJ from VA, and at 75+ on I-66 here in VA (and those are the de facto speed limits on both roads, even for 18 wheelers).
Why don’t you complain instead to the legislators who’ve imposed speed limits and fines?
What’s the point of having a car that can get you from LA to Vegas in 2 hrs when it’ll get you to county lockup in 1/2 the time?
What? You want me to petition that FUBAR political system we have heard so much about in order to change the speed limits? Madness!
Just make it a states rights issue.
Ask Texas & Arizona why Real Americans ™ can’t legally drive as fast as their Made-in-America Vettes can haul ass when the Sons of Nazis can drive 200 mph if they please.
Yes, but can it land on a barge?
Or go to Mars? Will there be Tesla S’s on Mars kicking up clouds of red dust as they accelerate from 0-60 in no time at all? We can hope.
In the more modest public transport domain, London transport are introducing the world’s first all electric powered double decker buses, they plan to replace 600-700 buses a year so it is a potentially huge market.
It is great to see EV technology finally take off after so many years of being stuck in the doldrums.
I keep watching the NOAA Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 count in the hope I will live to see it level off, if not decline. No luck so far…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/18/chinese-built-zero-emissions-electric-bus-prepares-for-service-in-london