Tesla hits ejector button on staff Tesla Motors, the company behind the delayed high-performance electric car the Roadster, is laying off staff. Tesla said the job cuts were about performance not reducing the overall headcount. Darryl Siry, Tesla's VP of sales and marketing told San Jose Mercury News: "If you don't get the job done, there are consequences. We …
But all the good puns are already taken.
To mike brockington: I think my lack of a good title is because I hit my head falling out of the chair on this one!!
Seriously though, I think the conspiracy theories are overdone on this one. I saw this on TV a while back. Both the show and the car were very long on glitz and short on physics.
I can't remember how many pounds of Pounds the silly thing was to cost but I do seem to recall you needed a rather large truck (lorry if you prefer) to carry the payment in. Although a full sized car would probably be adequate if one were paying in gold bars. (Even then it would be best to use care not to overloading the suspension.)
On a related note.... Li-ion?!?!?! Give me a break. I forgot how many cells this thing had but it was a BUNCH!! If my laptop experience is representative, I expected about $50/mile when you start replacing these things after a year or so - more if you drive them below 10% of course. And while considerably more ecco-friendly than your own personal RTG, this trunk load of batteries surely is no answer, regardless of the question.
Overall it sounds like another hopeless idea meeting its expected fate.
I think in fact that indeed the whole world of finance, politics, esponage,drug and people trafficing should bolster the ability for people to buy these wonderful motor and that the huge excess profits should go to the near by communities infastructure needs of the fabrication plants and all its people living there.
Oh and that there should be world unity in developing computers and engineering labs to dvelop all the molten carbon megawatts need to support the power demands such a huge burst of people byeing the things would put on the grid.
See oil use, plenty of wild life preservation, better carbon managment yep sounds a good nobel idea to me.
Electric motors have a torque curve that starts of really really high, and then drops to zero at top RPM. This causes a problem when applying internal combustion engine thinking to the drive train. You simple cant scale components to the approximate BHP rating of the engine. At low revs the high torque will tear cogs and axles to shreds. I know someone that has snapped the axle 3 times on a conventional small city electric car. Just imagine what a damage high performance sports engine can do...
I wanted to read more and take a look round the site....It will not open and looks like they have closed shop over night! I would have liked to see an electric sports car make it to market.
Maybe we will look to sustainable bio fuels like Virgin Airlines say they are trying soon. If we can use more sustainable bio fuels which do not eat into the resources we already use for our own use then this maybe the future until greener sources are available to us.After all we still use a lot of our earths resources to create the power needed to keep the electric vehicle running.
OK, well so that's "only" 15 Jubs of gold. Perhaps not too bad to transport, but still more than I have on hand at the moment.
Why not Li-Polymer? Seems quite obvious, but I will answer for those who haven't thought it out:
1 That would have made sense?
2 They got a good deal on Sony's recalled batteries?
3 When the car dies on the side of the road and the batteries burst into flames there is no additional requirement to set out road flares. (In the court documents this will be listed as a Major Safety design feature. But you read it in ElReg first!!!)
I'm not sure how a car that requires fossil fuels to be burned to create electricity, which is then transmitted across power lines, through several transformers, then into a domestic supply where it's turned (via another transformer) into heat and (electro)chemical energy is all that green? Then there are the batteries, which will need replacing at some point, at huge expense. Add Lithium batteries' poor cold-weather performance, and their liability to burst into flames at the slightest provocation to the equation and this starts to sound like a rather flaky idea.
Don't get me wrong, I've used electric vehicles in warehouse settings, and can imagine they'd be great fun on the road, but I don't see how they can be taken seriously as anything but a toy.
Pure electric cars are not likely to ever be viable in Northern climes due to the high energy needs of interior heating. Does the motor provide enough waste heat to heat the cabin? Doesn't seem likely. And what about AC? AC is not just a luxury, take for example health care workers. They need to arrive at work clean and dry.
I never see heating/AC viability discussed.
As for torque, in industry we use DC motor drives to manipulate armature and field voltages and thus control motor speed and provide constant torque across a range of speed. You don't just apply full voltage to a large DC motor and let 'er rip, which is where the torque chart would apply.
Certainly that technology is also being used in automobiles.
I don't understand why people don't research more into vortex engines. I wonder if that would be green enough for ya.
http://www.rhfweb.com/schauberger.html
I'm sure the black heli's will be coming for me now... every conspiracy contains a bit of truth...
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