Fantastic cars, crappy leadership. Usually crappy leadership leads to crappy cars as well... but that's not the case here.

1 hour ago, GCrites80s said:

Fantastic cars, crappy leadership. Usually crappy leadership leads to crappy cars as well... but that's not the case here.

 

Agree on all points, @Gramarye and @GCrites80s. In my case, my dad bought a Model S about two years ago and quickly pledged he would never drive an ICE vehicle again. As a car guy my entire life, who was disappointed when he chose the Tesla over some more traditional options, I had to see what the fuss was about. It only took about 5 minutes to figure it out. 

 

The electric propulsion has to be experienced. The styling is great and still looks fresh after 8 years. The continuous over the air software updates should revolutionize vehicles in a way that is almost as significant as the electric motors themselves. And, having taken it on a road trip with over 1200 highway miles, I can attest that the “autopilot” is a tremendously effective and valuable driver assistance program IF used properly and with full supervision. 

 

I was and am a convert, and believe in the brilliance of the engineering and products that this little carmaker in Fremont, CA can produce. Based on all of this, I bought TSLA at what ended up being its 2017 peak. And I’ll echo the previous comments that I just wish Elon would shut up and let his products do the speaking for him! They can stand on their own right and don’t need his outlandish boosterism. If he redirected that energy into making sure Tesla continues to have the type of corporate culture and workplace environment that will continue to produce such great innovations, everything else should work out for itself.

18 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Fantastic cars, crappy leadership. Usually crappy leadership leads to crappy cars as well... but that's not the case here.

 

I think the issue here is that "leadership" is a broad term.

 

Musk is a headache with respect to certain elements of leadership: Management of expectations, public communications.

 

But compared to the executives at other car companies, he is an absolute visionary.  And he instinctively gets some basic MBA concepts that some of those other companies appear to have forgotten--first mover advantage, inflection points on adoption curves, vulnerabilities of the franchise business model, etc.  For years now, people have been saying that Tesla is vulnerable because the other big OEMs are going to get serious about EV technology.  Back when TSLA was under $50, I was definitely afraid of that and it was why I waited longer than I should have to buy in originally.  I simply did not anticipate just how lethargic the other OEMs were going to be once they saw the technology in action.  And I still don't know when they're really going to wake up, but even now, the best any of them can hope for is probably to play Samsung to Tesla's Apple.  Will it be after Tesla gets the Semi and Model Y into production?  How about a pickup, a medium-duty truck, and a 7-passenger minivan to go along with the sedan (3), luxury SUV (X), and crossover SUV (Y)?  After it has moved into Oshawa and Hamtramck and retrofitted them the way it did NUMMI?

 

I sold notwithstanding all that because I think its momentum outran its fundamentals (most of what I sold was above $340) and Musk has lost some of the market's confidence.  But I didn't sell all my position, and I certainly don't see the company going bankrupt.  The cars sell as fast as they can roll them off the line, at decent profit margins even after the recent price cuts.  And the best talent in the industry now wants to work for Tesla, perhaps in part because they've had so little success moving the corporate culture in the existing OEMs--decadence and hidebound orthodoxy that Musk predicted and took advantage of long before I believed it.  So I give the man credit where it's due.

As more time passes, I do fear that the older American manufacturers are just too cracked-out on bigass trucks and crummy mid-level, low-quality crossovers like Eqinoxes(-en?) and Liberties to care about their electrics until another one of their patented apocalypses brought on by the macroeconomy. They've always been like this Unfortunately I don't trust Tesla to be able to pass the acid test for a long time either.

 

If diesel is taken away from Europe, though, expect to see the EU manufacturers to ratchet up electric very quickly.

I finally saw an electric Ford Focus.  Ford prided itself for putting the thing out on the same line up in Michigan as all of the gasoline Focuses.  Well, that was the whole problem.  Adapting electric to a gasoline car frame didn't work.  The battery takes up much of the trunk, leaving little trunk space, and I suspect the extra weight in the rear and less under the hood gives it odd driving characteristics.  In order to take advantage of the advantages of electric can offer, a vehicle needs to be designed as electric from the ground up.  It needs to have its own assembly line and minimal part sharing from the rest of the lineup.  The American manufacturers are more hesitant than ever to make that real investment since the sale of cars is being dwarfed by crossovers, SUV's, and trucks.  

 

 

When car companies first started introducing hybrid cars that looked "normal", they didn't do as well as cars like the Prius that had a unique look to them. I wonder if the same thing is true of electric cars -- people would rather have a car that looks unique rather than an "normal"-looking electric car that no one knows is electric.

18 minutes ago, taestell said:

When car companies first started introducing hybrid cars that looked "normal", they didn't do as well as cars like the Prius that had a unique look to them. I wonder if the same thing is true of electric cars -- people would rather have a car that looks unique rather than an "normal"-looking electric car that no one knows is electric.

 

I'm sure that the manufactures spent a ton of money in r&d and marketing to figure this out.  The dilemma continues to be that what electric is technically best at -- small, lightweight cars -- is the opposite of what is profitable.  The only highly profitable small cars out there are luxury sports cars like the Porsche.  

 

It takes nearly as much labor, nearly as much space, and nearly as much inventory space and staging to build small cars as compared to hugely profitable trucks & SUVs.  The public is willing to pay much, much more for a base model truck or SUV or crossover as compared to a car.  

 

A lot of the stigma against small cars comes from the cheaper components that manufacturers outfit them with.  Cheap tires, cheap suspension, and disastrously in Ford's recent history, a new lightweight transmission that was not completely vetted before production began.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

I finally saw an electric Ford Focus.  Ford prided itself for putting the thing out on the same line up in Michigan as all of the gasoline Focuses.  Well, that was the whole problem.  Adapting electric to a gasoline car frame didn't work.  The battery takes up much of the trunk, leaving little trunk space, and I suspect the extra weight in the rear and less under the hood gives it odd driving characteristics.  In order to take advantage of the advantages of electric can offer, a vehicle needs to be designed as electric from the ground up.  It needs to have its own assembly line and minimal part sharing from the rest of the lineup.  The American manufacturers are more hesitant than ever to make that real investment since the sale of cars is being dwarfed by crossovers, SUV's, and trucks.

 

So make electric crossovers, SUVs, and trucks!  Tesla is moving into that space but has only reached the high-end luxury SUV market so far (Model X).  That's one of the few places where another company could still get first mover advantage on Tesla.  No one is even trying.  Electric truck competitors are coming from the startup space, firms even newer and less well-capitalized than Tesla--Rivian, Workhorse, etc.

 

1 hour ago, taestell said:

When car companies first started introducing hybrid cars that looked "normal", they didn't do as well as cars like the Prius that had a unique look to them. I wonder if the same thing is true of electric cars -- people would rather have a car that looks unique rather than an "normal"-looking electric car that no one knows is electric.

 

Tesla affirmatively took this in the opposite direction.

 

The EV1 attempted to look somewhat futuristic (look at this from the perspective of late 1990s aesthetics):

 

 

The Model S and Model 3 both look like many other stately sedans you might find at a country club.  The styling is largely traditional and conservative.  The fun stuff is under the hood (or, in this case, under the entire car).

 

5 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

I'm sure that the manufactures spent a ton of money in r&d and marketing to figure this out.  The dilemma continues to be that what electric is technically best at -- small, lightweight cars -- is the opposite of what is profitable.  The only highly profitable small cars out there are luxury sports cars like the Porsche.  

 

It takes nearly as much labor, nearly as much space, and nearly as much inventory space and staging to build small cars as compared to hugely profitable trucks & SUVs.  The public is willing to pay much, much more for a base model truck or SUV or crossover as compared to a car.  

 

This is a misconception about electric cars.  Actually, a central feature of the Tesla design is making a large, flat battery that occupies nearly the entire undercarriage of the car.  As such, it's not quite true to say that electrics are best at "small, lightweight" cars.  With Tesla's design principle, which is very likely to be copied because of its exceptional effects on weight distribution and center of gravity, the vehicles that can be electrified the most effectively are low (to the ground) vehicles with wide wheelbases--ones with a lot of underside surface area, basically.  As such, the technology really is ready to move into the space of light-duty pickups and crossovers.  If anything, the X was a bigger challenge because of the taller profile (and it's readily apparent that it's still lower and slimmer than, say, an Escalade or Tahoe).

Re: some of the above comments about the Detroit manufacturers. They are all slowly rebalancing their workforce from mechanically to electrically (software) skilled and are hedging their bets on the real impact of electric. 

What they’re really doing is pursuing a strategy of ‘electrification’ as opposed to ‘electric’. What that means basically is hybrid vehicles. The long-term endgame is cars with a small, maybe single-cylinder, engine that runs to merely charge the battery. There isn’t the fortitude either commercially, or politically, to do away with the internal combustion engine altogether. 

45 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

So make electric crossovers, SUVs, and trucks!  Tesla is moving into that space but has only reached the high-end luxury SUV market so far (Model X).  That's one of the few places where another company could still get first mover advantage on Tesla.  No one is even trying.  Electric truck competitors are coming from the startup space, firms even newer and less well-capitalized than Tesla--Rivian, Workhorse, etc.

 

Hyuandai Kona

Kia Niro / Soul (LOL at Soul EV sales though)

 

I'm not sure, but I think those are only available in states that have their own incentives (California, New York, etc.).

But Elon said...

 

 

Tesla Scrutinized by U.S. Agency Over Model 3 Safety Claims

 

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk a cease-and-desist letter last year regarding Model 3 safety claims and has subpoenaed the carmaker for information on several crashes, according to documents posted by a nonprofit advocacy group.

NHTSA lawyers took issue with an Oct. 7 Tesla blog post that said the Model 3 had achieved the lowest probability of injury of any vehicle the agency ever tested, the documents released Tuesday by the legal transparency group Plainsite show. The regulator said the claims were inconsistent with its advertising guidelines regarding crash ratings and that it would ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the statements were unfair or deceptive acts.

 

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/tesla-draws-u-s-regulatory-blowback-over-model-3-safety-claims

Toss that cease-and-desist in the trash where it belongs.

 

Here is Tesla’s response to the NHTSA Cease and Desist.

Many new electric cars shown at the 2019 Frankfurt Auto Show:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-cars-dominate-frankfurt-auto-show-11568201099

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2019/products/porsche-taycan-world-premiere-live-all-electric-sports-car-18445.html

 

Porsche entered the luxury EV market last week with the unveiling of the Taycan.   What many believed to be a "Tesla killer" comes in with a much steeper price than the Model S and with less range, though the status that comes with a Porsche.  It's almost in between the Model S and upcoming Roadster 2.0 from Tesla both in price and performance.

https://fox4kc.com/2019/09/25/police-tesla-runs-out-of-battery-during-high-speed-pursuit/

 

In a related story, Frank Jackson directed the Cleveland Police Department to purchase a bunch of them.

California's planned power outages are a disaster for electric car owners:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90415333/tesla-owners-in-california-get-a-warning-to-charge-their-cars-before-the-power-goes-out

 

Quote

As Electrek points out, most Tesla owners don’t charge their vehicles to 100%, because it’s a bit of a time suck, and the batteries last such a long time that it’s not usually necessary—until the power company cuts the electricity, that is. Of course, Tesla just so happens to have another gadget that can help in the case of an emergency power outage—its PowerWall. Before the lights go out, Tesla is activating the “Storm Watch” feature on its PowerWall to store excess electricity before things go dark.

 

Why wouldn't people who own an electric car and have a charger in their garage just leave them plugged in overnight to get to 100%? Or, if they have a hookup at work, leave them charging all day while they are in the office? Are there that many people who own electric cars but don't have a place to plug them in daily for several hours?

On the Teslas at least, you lose regenerative braking when the battery is over 90% so that it doesn't over-charge the battery. Some people might not like the way the car drives when regen is off since it does feel a lot different.

14 hours ago, taestell said:

Why wouldn't people who own an electric car and have a charger in their garage just leave them plugged in overnight to get to 100%? Or, if they have a hookup at work, leave them charging all day while they are in the office? Are there that many people who own electric cars but don't have a place to plug them in daily for several hours?

 

The time to get to 90%-100% isn't generally worth it (think of it like filling up a bucket -> it's much easier to pour the water in when it's empty, but you have to go slowly at the end).  Watch your phone charge from 0-100%.  0-80% is pretty quick, but the last few %s take a long time.

 

There's also battery degradation if you leave it plugged in at 100% for too long.

It's true that keeping the battery at 100% for an extended period of time isn't good for the battery. The new version if iOS has a feature that learns your daily recharging habits and tries to minimize the time that the battery is charged to 100%. So if you plug in your phone at 11pm every night and unplug it at 7am every morning, iOS will start recharging your battery at 11pm but only take it up to 80% and leave it there overnight. Then around 6am it will resume charging so that the battery is at 100% when you unplug it at 7am and head off to work.

 

I'm surprised that Tesla doesn't have a similar "overnight charge mode" in place. Plug in your car when you get home from work and it will start recharging to 80% and then stop, but then resume charging 1-2 hours before you typically leave for work. And if there is a pre-arranged power outage like the one that just happened in California, Tesla could send out an "override" for the affected areas to disable that feature and force the cars to charge to 100% before the outage hit.

Just now, taestell said:

I'm surprised that Tesla doesn't have a similar "overnight charge mode" in place. Plug in your car when you get home from work and it will start recharging to 80% and then stop, but then resume charging 1-2 hours before you typically leave for work. And if there is a pre-arranged power outage like the one that jut happened in California, Tesla could send out an "override" for the affected areas to disable that feature and force the cars to charge to 100% before the outage hit.

 

I don't have a Tesla, just two friends who do, so @Gramarye may be able to speak about it better as an owner.  But my friends do use their apps to either limit charging to stop at 90% or from what I gathered, they do something similar to what you mentioned.  They're also both pretty techy so I don't know if what they're doing is standard through the Tesla app or if they built something outside of it as an add-on.

FWIW most gas stations won't be able to pump gas either during a power outage, unless they have provisions to switch over to a portable generator.  

56 minutes ago, taestell said:

It's true that keeping the battery at 100% for an extended period of time isn't good for the battery. The new version if iOS has a feature that learns your daily recharging habits and tries to minimize the time that the battery is charged to 100%. So if you plug in your phone at 11pm every night and unplug it at 7am every morning, iOS will start recharging your battery at 11pm but only take it up to 80% and leave it there overnight. Then around 6am it will resume charging so that the battery is at 100% when you unplug it at 7am and head off to work.

 

I'm surprised that Tesla doesn't have a similar "overnight charge mode" in place. Plug in your car when you get home from work and it will start recharging to 80% and then stop, but then resume charging 1-2 hours before you typically leave for work. And if there is a pre-arranged power outage like the one that just happened in California, Tesla could send out an "override" for the affected areas to disable that feature and force the cars to charge to 100% before the outage hit.

 

I don't have an automatic feature to resume charging in the morning right before I leave for work, but I don't need one.  80% is more than adequate for all my typical daily driving needs and I wouldn't want to charge to 100% right before leaving for work.  I charge to 100% before leaving for road trips.  But I won't charge to 100% even for Cleveland (from Akron).  Unless I'm going at least as far as Columbus or Pittsburgh, I'm not charging to 100%.  Just not worth it.

 

Regional outages would definitely be worrisome to me, though I can make that car last multiple weeks without charging based on my low-mileage lifestyle if I choose (take the side streets rather than interstate from West Akron to downtown for work, for example).  I do not have a Powerwall or a home solar installation, and just eyeballing it, my home is poorly situated for solar (two stories, multiple mature trees near the house, more not far away so the sun effectively rises a little later and sets a little earlier).  But I would think that the inconvenience to me from a planned regional outage would be dwarfed by those with greater mobility needs.

 

Also, if I can find anywhere with power, I can probably get at least some charge, just by bringing my trickling little 110v cable.  Maybe I could park in one of the hospital garages overnight, for example, if I could find a space near a 3-prong outlet and if the garages are connected to the backup generators there.  Or anywhere else nearby that might have a backup generator.

 

Needless to say, if such planned outages started becoming regular occurrences here, I would look into rooftop solar notwithstanding my sub-optimal physical space for it, and into a Powerwall as well.  And/or maybe a more traditional backup generator.  But the main weather threats to the grid here, as I understand it, are not fires, they're wind and ice.

 

The entire Great Lakes region is one of the most geologically and meteorologically safe in the country (probably the entire continent).  We have winter storms, but considering the fires of the West, the floods of the South, and the tornadoes of the Plains, I'm really not complaining too much, nor do I think that the likelihood of long planned outages is high here simply because we don't face those kinds of threats.  The outages in California are because the grid poses unacceptable wildfire risks under the current atmospheric conditions.  To put it mildly, that is supremely unlikely to occur in Ohio.

BTW the "California Wildfires are a Conspiracy to Clear Land for the High Speed Rail" conspiracy is still out there.  I listen to the nice-but-a-little-nutty Oginga Khamisi who hosts "The Talking Drum" on WAIF 88.3FM every Friday night.  The Talking Drum is a African and African-American discussion show.  The host often plays 20+ minute speeches by various prominent black characters like Louis Farrakhan.  

 

About a month ago The Talking Drum discussed the wildfires-are-for-HSR at length.  They call guys calling in talking about it.  So the fire conspiracy jumped (pun intended) from white tin foil hat guys to their black counterparts.  

1 hour ago, DarkandStormy said:

 

I don't have a Tesla, just two friends who do, so @Gramarye may be able to speak about it better as an owner.  But my friends do use their apps to either limit charging to stop at 90% or from what I gathered, they do something similar to what you mentioned.  They're also both pretty techy so I don't know if what they're doing is standard through the Tesla app or if they built something outside of it as an add-on.

 

Charge limits can be set/adjusted in car and in the Tesla app.

On ‎7‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 4:08 PM, Gramarye said:

The EV1 attempted to look somewhat futuristic (look at this from the perspective of late 1990s aesthetics):

 

 

 

I saw an EV last month on display at The Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles (https://www.petersen.org).  They have it displayed right next to the chassis of a Model S.

 

What was really hilarious is that I went there with my much-younger brother, who is the biggest Musk fan of all-time, and he had never heard of the EV-1.  I told him when we should watch the "What Happened to the Electric Car" documentary from 2006.  He had never heard of that either.  When we got back to his place he deflected my second suggestion to watch the documentary.  He asked me "what score it got on Rotten Tomatoes".  I said I don't know and I don't care.  So, like many other things with him, he just shuts things down when it is revealed that he doesn't know about a lot of stuff despite his gold-plated education.  

On the same day, we walked past the worksite for the Purple Line Subway at Fairfax Ave.  It was a Sunday but you could hear the ventilation running for the tunnel and mechanics for the tunnel boring machines.  He winced because he really didn't know that many companies build tunnel boring machines and Musk's Boring Company has yet to build a single one.  Again, he got tight and anxious.  

 

I have no less a figure in my life than a younger brother, who has an engineering degree and moved to California explicitly to seek work at one of Musk's companies, as an illustration as to the extent to which the man has seduced a certain personality-type (or, in my brother's case, a lack of personality!).  

6 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

I saw an EV last month on display at The Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles (https://www.petersen.org).  They have it displayed right next to the chassis of a Model S.

 

What was really hilarious is that I went there with my much-younger brother, who is the biggest Musk fan of all-time, and he had never heard of the EV-1.  I told him when we should watch the "What Happened to the Electric Car" documentary from 2006.  He had never heard of that either.  When we got back to his place he deflected my second suggestion to watch the documentary.  He asked me "what score it got on Rotten Tomatoes".  I said I don't know and I don't care.  So, like many other things with him, he just shuts things down when it is revealed that he doesn't know about a lot of stuff despite his gold-plated education.  

On the same day, we walked past the worksite for the Purple Line Subway at Fairfax Ave.  It was a Sunday but you could hear the ventilation running for the tunnel and mechanics for the tunnel boring machines.  He winced because he really didn't know that many companies build tunnel boring machines and Musk's Boring Company has yet to build a single one.  Again, he got tight and anxious.  

 

I have no less a figure in my life than a younger brother, who has an engineering degree and moved to California explicitly to seek work at one of Musk's companies, as an illustration as to the extent to which the man has seduced a certain personality-type (or, in my brother's case, a lack of personality!).  

 

 

 

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

 

Oh and high Rotten Tomatoes scores just mean white guys in their 20s like something

12 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

 

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

 

Yeah, I made a half-criticism of online reviews (yelp, etc.), but he literally doesn't get it.  He has no interest in rock & roll.  When we drove through Hermosa Beach, I said "this is where Black Flag started", and he had no idea who Black Flag was. This what happens when you have siblings who are 15 years younger than you and grew up in a different state than they one you did.  

 

 

In fairness, the documentary from 2006 is backward-looking from a place already more than a dozen years in the past, in an extremely fast-moving, forward-looking sector.

2 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Yeah, I made a half-criticism of online reviews (yelp, etc.), but he literally doesn't get it.  He has no interest in rock & roll.  When we drove through Hermosa Beach, I said "this is where Black Flag started", and he had no idea who Black Flag was. This what happens when you have siblings who are 15 years younger than you and grew up in a different state than they one you did.  

 

 

That's enough of an age gap even if you grew up in adjoining towns.  Holly (my daughter's mom) was watching Rock of Love once, and while she sort of knew who Poison was, she didn't know Brett Michaels was their singer.    And when I told her John Hinckley shot President Reagan trying to impress Jody Foster, she looked at me like I said aliens did it.

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

In fairness, the documentary from 2006 is backward-looking from a place already more than a dozen years in the past, in an extremely fast-moving, forward-looking sector.

 

The early promise of electric cars was to get us off foreign oil and reduce air pollution in cities.  That meant small and hopefully cheap electric cars.  Tesla is the opposite - horrendously expensive cars that serve primarily as status symbols.  

 

We are still a long way from sub-$20,000 electric cars.  

 

 

 

 

 

Your younger brother's Musk idolatry is perhaps excessive, but it seems to have driven you to the opposite extreme.

 

Of course we're a long way from sub-$20,000 electric cars, but we're moving further away from sub-$20,000 ICE cars, too.  https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g25105816/cheapest-new-cars-2019/.  With the exception of the Nissan Versa and Chevrolet Spark, even the cheapest cars in the US are all $16k+ at this point.  The Camry and Accord are both around $24k.

 

The average transaction price for all new cars in 2019 was right around $35k.  The baseline Tesla Model 3 right now is about $39k with no rebate.

 

As for the promise of small, cheap electric cars: Those may still be coming, but the only company that has made an EV-focused business model work in this country has followed the tech sector model: expensive, high-end luxuries for the early adopters bringing in the revenue necessary to expand down into the mass market.  And while Tesla may not have a true mass market model right now, the $39k price point means that it is at least knocking on the door.  The mass market doesn't begin at $20k anymore, it really begins around $30k.

 

Also, I'm not sure why we should hold up "small, cheap" electric cars as the ultimate goal.  Why not powerful, fun ones that are ready for a driverless future?

The idea and cost savings of being able to ditch the transmission, not have all that stuff hanging off of the front of the engine, the forgoing of emissions equipment and much lower parts counts in general had major potential to lower the price of vehicles when it wasn't forced to prop up a brand new car company. Since the Big 3 refused to get off of the bigass truck crack we wound up without ordinary people cars in the EV segment.

19 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Tesla is the opposite - horrendously expensive cars that serve primarily as status symbols.  

 

 

This flat out is a ridiculous statement. 

9 minutes ago, Cygnus said:

 

This flat out is a ridiculous statement. 

 

Really?  So I'm the only person here who has social media feeds littered with stuff like this?

 

 

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

Really?  So I'm the only person here who has social media feeds littered with stuff like this?

 

Anecdotes do not constitute data.

 

I'm sure every car brand has a few people like that.  I'm not sure what the point is?

 

We're still very early in the EV (re) adaptation.  Who came up with this notion that EVs had to be small and cheap and that the goal is instantaneously to offer them for under $20k?  Tesla has made the decision to go a bit more expensive to provide vehicles that are powerful, sleek, safe, and with plenty of range.  Until the cost of the battery comes down, all their vehicles will be $30k+.  You want a cheap EV?  Buy a Leaf.  Buy a Bolt.  Buy a Smart EQ, e-Golf, Ioniq, Soul EV, etc.  Total cost to own really isn't that much more than an entry level ICE vehicle.

On 10/10/2019 at 4:59 PM, GCrites80s said:

The idea and cost savings of being able to ditch the transmission, not have all that stuff hanging off of the front of the engine, the forgoing of emissions equipment and much lower parts counts in general had major potential to lower the price of vehicles when it wasn't forced to prop up a brand new car company. Since the Big 3 refused to get off of the bigass truck crack we wound up without ordinary people cars in the EV segment.

 

Another great point.  In the last few years I owned my 2001 Nissan Altima (granted, it was north of 170k miles at that point, though I was hoping to get it into the 200 club), I had to replace the transmission, alternator, and distributor.  All things that don't exist on an electric car.

 

Free charging is everywhere and the places that offer it are growing.  I was at a conference at the Lodge at Geneva-on-the-Lake last week.  I had more charge when I got home to Akron than I did when I left, and I didn't pay a dime for it.  The Whole Foods 365 near my house has free charging (not as fast as the Tesla Destination Chargers, which are in turn not as fast as Superchargers, but it's still free fuel while I'm doing shopping that I'd otherwise be doing anyway).  And even when I do have to charge at home, a full 300-mile charge costs around $10 in electricity.

 

In other words, with the exception of the car payment, which I admit is steep (though I also took a 42-month loan from my credit union rather than the usual 60 that people take these days), this car is dirt cheap to drive and I don't expect to need another car for a long, long time after this one is paid off.

 

I understand that the battery will lose potency with time.  But other than that, I have every reasonable expectation of helping my son (currently under 5) learn to drive on this car.

 

Suspension and tires will still be issues, but that's because the car goes 0-60 in 4.5 and I do rather enjoy taking advantage of that fact whenever I have the onramp clear in front of me, so I may not be entirely innocent when it comes to the greater tire wear and tear.

^My friends who have Teslas say basically every couple years they have to rotate the tires and there's one fluid or something to get annually.  Basically no routine maintenance to worry about (well, until the battery needs replaced in...10 years?).

1 hour ago, DarkandStormy said:

^My friends who have Teslas say basically every couple years they have to rotate the tires and there's one fluid or something to get annually.  Basically no routine maintenance to worry about (well, until the battery needs replaced in...10 years?).

 

People talk about replacing the batteries 10 years out or so, but a lot will depend on both the cost curve of batteries (as things currently stand, the battery is a very significant portion of the price of the entire car) and whether they still make backwards-compatible versions 10 years from now.  And of course on how much degradation has actually happened by then.  If I've lost 50% of the battery's potency, yes, I'll want a new one.  But if it's 15%, I'll probably just deal with it.  And the option (which almost every Tesla owner uses) to cap any charging session at 80% rather than 100% most of the time (charging only to 100% when you're just about to turn around and drain it, i.e., go on a long trip) has been shown to greatly reduce battery degradation, and it's entirely possible that degradation after 10 years will be less than 15% or even less than 10%.

 

At that point, the car is losing stamina to age more slowly than I am. ? 

2 hours ago, DarkandStormy said:

^My friends who have Teslas say basically every couple years they have to rotate the tires and there's one fluid or something to get annually.  Basically no routine maintenance to worry about (well, until the battery needs replaced in...10 years?).

 

Take a look at the hybrids like the Toyota Camry Hybrid -- batteries are not catastrophically failing at 10 years out, even with hard use as a taxi.  I bet most drivers will not notice even a 20% decline, they'll just keep on driving until they can't afford not to replace the battery.

14 minutes ago, Foraker said:

 

Take a look at the hybrids like the Toyota Camry Hybrid -- batteries are not catastrophically failing at 10 years out, even with hard use as a taxi.  I bet most drivers will not notice even a 20% decline, they'll just keep on driving until they can't afford not to replace the battery.

 

Hybrid batteries != EV batteries, but point taken.

The issue with taking modern batteries to 100% is that it tends to put a lot more heat into them than taking them to 80 or 90 percent. Heat is one of their main enemies along with deep discharging.

 

This is in contrast to when I was racing R/C in the '90s and early 2000s with Ni-Cd and NIMH batteries which always wanted a "full" discharge each cycle (to excatly 6.0v on a 7.2v pack, but still NO lower) while making the most power with a fast charge (5 amps+) but having a shorter life when charged at more than 4 amps. Some people who were really reckless would charge directly off of a full-size car battery (no charger) to nuke their batteries for a big main event. This was dangerous and would kill the batteries in a few cycles but gave another 25 watts or so. Personally, I wanted same amount of horsepower in the mains that I had in practice and the qualifying races so that I didn't blow corners or crash off of jumps. I don't think the top pros wanted a bunch of new horsepower out of nowhere either.

Edited October 15, 20195 yr by GCrites80s

On 10/10/2019 at 4:00 PM, jmecklenborg said:

The early promise of electric cars was to get us off foreign oil and reduce air pollution in cities.  That meant small and hopefully cheap electric cars.  Tesla is the opposite - horrendously expensive cars that serve primarily as status symbols.  

 

We are still a long way from sub-$20,000 electric cars.  

 

The fact that higher end Teslas are a status symbol right now isn't really a bad thing. If people are buying fancy electric cars instead of fancy ICE cars, that's still a win.

 

The bigger issue is America's love affair with huge vehicles. The gains that we are making in the efficiency of ICE vehicles are being cancelled out by the fact that more people are choosing SUVs and big trucks instead of cars. Until we can do something to lure people out of big ICE vehicles, electric cars aren't going to have any meaningful impact on amount of oil that is burned or the amount of pollution belched out into America's cities.

^They're not choosing them, they're being sold them. Almost nobody needs that crap. But since Americans' #1 skill is rationalizing things and creating justifications it's easy for the marketing people and sales staff to get people (non-enthusiasts even!) to sign for an extra $5-50K.

Edited October 15, 20195 yr by GCrites80s

19 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

This is in contrast to when I was racing R/C in the '90s and early 2000s with Ni-Cd and NIMH batteries which always wanted a "full" discharge each cycle (to excatly 6.0v on a 7.2v pack, but still NO lower) while making the most power with a fast charge (5 amps+) but having a shorter life when charged at more than 4 amps. Some people who were really reckless would charge directly off of a full-size car battery (no charger) to nuke their batteries for a big main event. This was dangerous and would kill the batteries in a few cycles but gave another 25 watts or so. Personally, I wanted same amount of horsepower in the mains that I had in practice and the qualifying races so that I didn't blow corners or crash off of jumps. I don't think the top pros wanted a bunch of new horsepower out of nowhere either.

 

A kid I was friends with down the street, and this other kid from the next neighborhood had those $130~ RC cars with the NiCad batteries.  I seem to recall that there were two tiers of battery power, but that might be wrong (one that started with a 7 and another with 9?).  I only got to drive one of them 2-3 times.  They were unbelievably fast but the batteries often died in under five minutes.  It was inconceivable that I would ever get a toy that nice, but I remember spending a lot of time looking at the RC car ads in the back of magazines.  

^Most NiCd R/C cars were 7.2v (six-cell) but the Tyco Turbo Hoppers were 9.6v (eight cell). Unfortunately those 9.6v packs were filled with AA-size batteries so you didn't get any more run time than the 7.2v packs which were filled with sub-C batteries. I was having an OK time with the toy-grade cars until a track opened in an old Nissan dealership at East Main St. and I-270 in 1991. The Tyco, Nikko, Radio Shack and Sears cars could barely make it around the track at all from being too light, bouncing all around and not having limited-slip differentials. For only about $30 more you could get a Kyosho or Tamiya that could easily navigate the track and had replaceable parts. And the battery charged in only 15 minutes rather than 4-8 hours!

 

Then I promptly set about accidentally double-charging the battery on the bedroom floor of a buddy's brand new trailer home, melting the carpet in the process. 

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/688218?journalCode=jacr&

 

The Functional Alibi

Anat Keinan, Ran Kivetz, and Oded Netzer

Sept 07, 2016

 

Abstract

Spending money on hedonic luxuries often seems wasteful, irrational, and even immoral. We propose that adding a small utilitarian feature to a luxury product can serve as a functional alibi, justifying the indulgent purchase and reducing indulgence guilt. We demonstrate that consumers tend to inflate the value, and usage frequency, of utilitarian features when they are attached to hedonic luxuries. Using a mixed-method approach, combining archival data (an analysis of over 1,000 online reviews of handbags) with studies conducted in the field and laboratory, we establish the functional alibi effect and show that it is mediated by guilt and more likely to occur when the luxury purchase is perceived as frivolous and expensive, and when the purchase is for oneself rather than a gift. We explore the effect of adding a functional alibi in a variety of marketing contexts, and we examine various consumer populations representing diverse demographics.

U.S. Air Quality falling after years of increases.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/467067-new-study-air-pollution-in-us-rose-resulting-in-premature-deaths

There's a totally ridiculous amount of semis on the road now. It's insane. Also big strides in auto emissions during the 2000s are being erased due to SUVs and crossovers as the ICE engine emissions reductions slow. The crossover engine has to be 500cc larger to offset the vehicle's size and weight relative to the equivalent sedan model. 

Edited October 23, 20195 yr by GCrites80s

FUDsters having a rough morning...