Tesla unwraps Model S After months of speculation, Telsa has finally pulled the dust sheets of its eagerly anticipated four-door hatchback, the Model S. While precise mechanical details where thin on the ground, Telsa did say that the Model S will be capable of an electronically limited top speed on 130mph, a 0-60 time of “well below” five seconds …
Isn't that like being "Too rich" or "Too good looking" or "Too healthy".
But I really hope Tesla do well, be it with purely 'leccy cars, or the hydrogen fuel cell cars which seems like a better power storage system.
Their designs are so much better than any other eco cars. They realise that running off electricity isn't an excuse for looking shit.
The designers clearly have gone for something flashy over something practical. Touch screens are a no-no in cars. They're a definite no-no in aircraft, why? Because there is no tactile feedback, it's far easier, accurate to actually push a button.
I use a TomTom Go a lot, far better if it had multi-function buttons around the edge of the screen rather than the touch screen buttons it uses.
It's poor ergonomic design by people that don't really understand the importance of getting it right and to be honest, it's not that hard to get it right! The rule is: don't use touch screens.
The swapping out of batteries is a good idea.
Lets say batteries are good for 2000 charges and cost £6000.
Then each petrol station could sell the charged battery (On loan) to the car owner for lets say £20 a time.
The station holds a bank of batteries. When someone comes in with low power, they hand over theirs and get a fully charged one as a replacement.
Punter gets 300 miles for £20.
The station makes £40,000 turnover from each battery life cycle.
Problem is, the batteries are harmful to the environment to make. And on such a mass scale, they could even be worse than fossil fuels (Which will still be used to charge the batteries anyway).
Hydrogen fuel cell time.
Paris, because she would buy one.
The backend reminds me of an Audi A4 (B8), actually, which I think is a good looking car, but the profile is Aston-ish and the front is definitely Maserati-inspired.
This is definitely a car I could own and love, assuming build quality and handling are up to par, and only time will tell on that score.
I suppose it would add to engineering effort and development time, but I'd love to see a version with, say, 60 mile (~100 km) battery range and a range-extending secondary power unit (whatever that may be, but probably a small combustion engine) used to re-charge batteries while driving. It'd still do me - 95% of my driving is around town, so I'd be all-electric most of the time. In some markets - out here in Australia, for example - I don't think we'll be seeing battery-swap stations or 480V charging posts in forecourts any time soon, so a secondary power source for long-range driving, where distance between towns can get rather large, would be a good idea.
Decent rear, pretty sides ... real ugly face. Why is that huge orifice on an electric car? There's no 30% efficient (or less) fuel-burner in there, so no need to gulp vast amounts of air, so that's a big black drag-creating me-too fashion statement. Yuk.
(And back when internal combustion engines were even less efficient, some cars had tasteful radiator grilles, so even oil-burners don't need that orifice).
They are quoting $49,900 for the "base model", and ranges of 160, 230, or 300 miles. So the 300-mile version is going to cost more. This price is also with a federal tax credit of $7500 (5154 pounds), but the US government seems unlikely to give a tax credit to non-US taxpayers, so UK buyers will presumably pay more unless the UK also gives a (possibly different) credit.
Sure, electric cars might be exactly as bad for the environment as petrol powered ones. Might be. But petrol powered cars are certainly as bad as petrol powered cars. The difference is the 'might be' and the 'certainly is'. Nothing to loose, really.
I'm waiting for a Tesla MPV.
300 mile battery pack? In their dreams. Yet again, Tesla are announcing something that they hope will exist in the future. They haven't managed to get much better than 50 miles out of the Roadster - now they are claiming six times the mileage for a bigger, heavier, draggier saloon.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Tesla cars are the Moller Skycars of the road.
What about the batteries, where do they come from? They have lots of nastybits inside, from all round thr world.
There was a study done to work out which cars have best green credientials over the period of their whole life, from manufacturing to disposal. The best car? Toyota Landcruiser, mostly becuase it goes on FOREVER.
This shows that Eco don't got to be Ugly and they took a current design, made it usable with trunk in front and nice hatch and storage area in the rear that can also actually haul something, ah, the Family Truckster Lives!
I like everything about it and the price is not really too bad for what you get.
Count on their being two years or so late on delivery, but they are a flexible company and will undoubtedly make good, this is the direction the US auto industry needs to be moving full steam in.
I'll have you know that I have never once hugged a tree, and don't even consider myself a "greeny" - environmental responsibility is a mainstream view, IMO.
I am a strong advocate of electric cars and I understand very well electricity generation (where it comes from), transmission (distribution over the grid) and consumption (whether industrial or domestic).
Electric cars are about (or at least) three times as efficient as a normal car. A term that describes this well is "well-to-wheel efficiency", which is the distance driven per megajoule (MJ) of input energy from the original source (e.g. oil in an oil well, coal in a coal seam, or wind blowing around doing nothing other than messing up your hair). Taking into account the energy costs and efficiency of every stage (extracting, processing/refining, distributing, pumping and finally consuming energy), you get figures like this:
Normal petrol car (family sedan) - 0.28 km/MJ
Hybrid (e.g. Toyota Prius) - 0.56 km/MJ
All Electric (Li-ion battery) - 1.14 km/MJ
So, even if all energy is derived from fossil-fuel sources, electric vehicles STILL have the lowest emissions by far, AND there are zero emissions at the tailpipe, meaning they don't contribute to local pollution (e.g. smog). Remember when smog-reduction was a worthy aim in itself?
BUT, battery electric vehicles permit energy to be derived from any generating source - wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, nuclear, wave, tidal, biomass, coal, "clean" coal, oil, gas, whatever. De-coupling the transport energy sector from oil, and permitting ANY MIX of electricity generating sources on the grid (then, of course, partly used for battery charging), produces the most efficient outcome and reduces emissions by the greatest degree. Furthermore, both the automotive technology and electricity generating streams can proceed at their optimum pace.
Clearer now? I'd like a dollar, pound, or slap-and-tickle-with-Sarah for every time I've had to explain this .....
When they make an estate/tourer/station-wagon version, with nice rails on the roof for my kayaks, then I'll be interested. Surf-boards and mountain bikes are one thing, but can't get a 20-foot racing K2 inside anything you would honestly call a car...
'course, that roof-rack might just shorten the range a little: it certainly does with a petrol engine :(
But the extra boot in the front sounds perfect for the wet kit after the race.
On the styling - it's not an Aston, Maserati, Jaguar, Audi, Renault look-alike: it's a Mazda RX8 with proper rear doors.
> Where do you think the hydrogen comes from though?
Ummm.. just guessing here... but...water?
I think you what you meant to ask was where will the electricity to split the water to come from?
Well, the sources of electricity are many; solar (wind, photovoltaic, tidal, wave (not tidal-wave), hydro-electric, steam turbines (using heliostats or geothermal to create steam), Stirling engines (reuse the super-heated steam from the former, or waste heat from some other source). There are many many sources of power.. there are very few good ways to store that power. Hydrogen is one.
Now storing the Hydrogen can be tricky because it is such a small molecule, but that's another problem.
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