Thoughts on TESLA

[JoeWras]

This is an interesting thread.

What I have learned is there is a ton of passion about EVs and Tesla. Extreme passion. It seems that there is a push to take a stand one way or another?

I'm pretty much of the persuasion that it is nice to have another option. I don't need ICE or EV to win, which seems to be where we are trending. Is that the way everything is going to be now? Are we going to parse each others words to the extreme to win a position?

Options are nice to have. That's all I want.

Now maybe I need to go to the self driving cars thread and bring back that debate to life.

 

[ERD50]

.... I think we are seeing a shift as dramatic as the shift from horse drawn carriages to autos. Is Musk another Ford? As you have correctly stated: we do not know. But, as the EVs get cheaper and charging becomes a non-issue there will be no advantage to looking back unless you are a collector of antiques.

It's interesting to think about. I was curious, and did a little poking around the web, and I think it's fair to say that the Model T was the first car available to the masses, and sales took off ~ 1913. Then I read that car registrations surpassed the known number of horses ~ 1926 (US numbers), so ~ 13 years to go 'mainstream'?

Electric cars were actually competing pretty well with the ICE back in the 1900~1910 time frame. But lets consider the past few years to be the start of EVs commonly available for the masses (the Leaf, and we were supposed to have a $35,000 Tesla by now, but I wonder if one will ever be sold at that price?). Will EVs make up 50% of sales (let alone registrations, as cars last ~ 13~14 years on average?) in another 10~15 years? I doubt it. We will see.

The funny thing is, when I was younger, I assumed I would have been driving an EV a couple decades ago. There is an awful lot about them that is attractive. But then I came to understand the full process of generating the electricity and all that entails, getting it to the car, and I didn't anticipate the advances that have been made with the piston engine and its reliability and far lower maintenance compared with the old days (points, carburetors, distributors, etc), and how a hybrid design could augment the ICE. And the ICE keeps moving the goal posts.

Another historical point of interest - there were hybrids, series and parallel, back in the early days of the auto as well.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

This is an interesting thread.

What I have learned is there is a ton of passion about EVs and Tesla. Extreme passion. It seems that there is a push to take a stand one way or another?

I'm pretty much of the persuasion that it is nice to have another option. I don't need ICE or EV to win, which seems to be where we are trending. Is that the way everything is going to be now? Are we going to parse each others words to the extreme to win a position?

Options are nice to have. That's all I want.

Now maybe I need to go to the self driving cars thread and bring back that debate to life.

I agree, an EV is a wonderful option. I like options as well. They fit some people's needs/wants very well, even i their current state, so why not?

I just take exception with some of the claims made for them. And of course, I take exception with the subsidies, but that's another story that has its own thread too!


-ERD50

 

[Texas Proud]

I get the concerns about Musk and how his recent actions call into question Tesla's future leadership, but I do not get the negativity concerning EV technology or the inevitable shift to EV from ICE powered cars/trucks.

Here, you highlight depreciation as though Tesla or other EVs are more affected than conventional cars; I have heard no evidence to support that notion. You go on to imply that cutting your fuel costs in half (ignoring future tax increases) and never paying to change your oil (along with other maintenance savings) is not worthy of consideration when buying a new car. We are talking about hundreds or thousands in savings for every year of ownership. Why minimize the value of those savings for the average daily driver?

The biggest expected cost of EV ownership (Tesla included) over current ICE vehicles is battery replacement. Right now, the estimates are around $10,000. However, even the older Model S battery packs are getting well over 100,000 miles and still going strong. One company claims to have gotten over 300,000 miles on the original Model S pack. That is pretty darn good and getting better with each new advance in battery technology. I don't think I've ever driven a car over 100,000 miles before selling it.

Tesla is on the cutting edge of all of this. If Tesla can continue the upward sales trajectory and secure another round of investment (which history says they will), I see no reason to think they will not continue to hold a significant chunk of the EV market going forward.

For me it is about a $1000 per year for oil change and gas... but the cost of an all EV is much more than that for many years... I remember a year or two ago someone posted a chart on the break even of buying an EV over an ICE car... some never did... many were over 100,000 miles... and this did not take into consideration the cost of a battery pack...


I think ERD is right that it will be hybrids that win in the end, not full EV...


BTW, if they made a plug in hybrid that did say 20 to 50 miles on full electric that was say $1,000 or so more than a regular car I would be in... it would do 90% of my diving needs and I would save money in the end...

 

[NW-Bound]

The most important part is that electricity is fungible -- it can be generated from clean or dirty sources, and distributed much more easily than fossil fuels. Electricity generation is likely to get cleaner and cleaner, and the end user won't have to switch to an ethanol or CNG engine or furnace. Electricity is kind of like cash that can be used for almost anything, whereas fossil fuels are like store credit, only usable for certain things.

Yes. What we need is for batteries to be cheaper and last longer. Solar panels are already amazingly cheap.

Not all lithium batteries use cobalt, which is expensive. For example lithium iron phosphate battery (LiFePO4 or LFP for short) uses common material. Lithium batteries with cobalt have higher energy density, hence currently used in mobile applications like smartphones and the Tesla car where weight is a more important factor.

LFP battery is the safest of all lithium types in terms of explosion or catching fire. It has a longer life and more tolerant of abuse. Typical specs is 2000 cycles of 100% depth of discharge to cause the battery to be down to 80% of its original capacity.

The LEAF uses lithium manganese oxide battery (LiMn2O4). No cobalt here either.

 

[JoeWras]

I think ERD is right that it will be hybrids that win in the end, not full EV...

BTW, if they made a plug in hybrid that did say 20 to 50 miles on full electric that was say $1,000 or so more than a regular car I would be in... it would do 90% of my diving needs and I would save money in the end...

+1.

Let also add that the Hybrid should not look dorky, and should fit a normal human. These are problems I have in the Prius and Volt. The Volt looks fine, but doesn't fit me well.

Car makers are making progress on this front.

Maintenance can still be an issue with the hybrids, and they carry a lot of extra baggage in complexity. Still, I think this is where I may end up some day, maybe even my next car 5 or 6 years down the road.

 

[samclem]

Smoking marijuana has zero relevance to erratic behavior of Elon Musk.

It is demonstrative of his erratic behavior/state of mind, not causative. His company is on the ropes along with the livelihood of thousands of employees. He says naysayers, rumormongers, and short sellers are dragging down Tesla's stock price and impacting his ability to get more financing. Then, during a time he claims to be working tremendous hours to fix a very big mess, he thinks it is a good idea to take the opportunity to do an obscure podcast for a couple of hours and be seen by the world to be swilling whiskey and smoking a joint.

 

[Chuckanut]

I stand by my position.

What’s your position on alcohol? Should alcohol users have access to secret material?

 

[Fedup]

I believe one of my security clearance asked for drug use, you have to be truthful. Don’t lie, because if they found out, it will be trouble. I don’t recall any question about alcohol.

 

[aja8888]

Natural Gas

RE: natural gas is used for a lot of things besides power plants. Remember plastics? Building heat? industrial use in manufacturing? etc? What will feed power plants when the available natural gas is not available for increased electrical demand?

Nuclear power? Coal?

 

[NW-Bound]

The fact is that fossil fuel is used for a lot of stuff. Besides plastics and various other materials, it is also used to make fertilizer. To burn it in cars seems such a waste to me. I guess that's why I stop caring for high-powered cars long ago.

When we run out, the world is in a lot of hurt. I guess our grandchildren will have to find a way, or know how to get stuff out of trees or sea water.

 

[Fedup]

The fact is that fossil fuel is used for a lot of stuff. Besides plastics and various other materials, it is also used to make fertilizer. To burn it in cars seems such a waste to me. I guess that's why I stop caring for high-powered cars long ago.

When we run out, the world is in a lot of hurt. I guess our grandchildren will have to find a way, or know how to get stuff out of trees or sea water.

By then Elon Musk will get us to Mars, another place to colonize. I’ve read recently, can’t remember the exact planet, maybe Venus, they discovered water there, so maybe there’s aliens out there. We can’t be alone.

 

[NW-Bound]

How much energy and material is needed to move one person to Mars?

It will not get better with technology, unless we know how to repeal the law of gravity. Teleportation?

 

[Fedup]

I don’t know but I hope Elon Musk would volunteer to be the first person to go there. Set an example for the rest of us.

 

[NW-Bound]

Yeah right!

Even though I worked in aerospace, it's been a long time since I followed any space news. I no longer find that aspect of science interesting, but get more interested in pedestrian projects like how to get more water in a drought, or how people make cheaper solar cells, batteries, etc...

But if, a big if, Musk volunteers to go to Mars, I will follow the development day and night. It's a promise.

It's not that I wish him harm, but if he puts his life where his word is, I am going to pay a lot more attention.

 

[corn18]

What’s your position on alcohol? Should alcohol users have access to secret material?

Touche. I'll let the Air Force decide.

 

[Chuckanut]

. Then, during a time he claims to be working tremendous hours to fix a very big mess, he thinks it is a good idea to take the opportunity to do an obscure podcast for a couple of hours and be seen by the world to be swilling whiskey and smoking a joint.

Swilling? More like sipping from what I saw.

Smoking? Well, yes. One puff.

I agree that both were not smart things to do in front of the media.

Later he comments on not being a regular weed smoker, smoking it almost never.

Oh, did you miss the part where the interviewer (a real potty mouth, IMHO) tries to get him to swear and he refuses to do it? Or talks about how using drugs keeps him from being productive and being useful?

Again, I must ask, who watched the entire interview? My guess is not many. I did.

I will ding him for letting himself be suckered into a trap, and not realizing how that lack of ethics in the modern media doesn’t prohibit exaggerating any minor faults a person exhibits. I bet he won’t make that mistake again.

If I was a Tesla stock holder I would find the interview reassuring. He looked reasonably healthy The guy is intelligent, still has a grand vision, and wants to help humanity work through its problems.

I have no idea if Tesla will succeed,fail or ? I don’t own the stock or one of their cars. Time will tell how they do.

Never let perfection become the enemy of the good.

 

[Chuckanut]

Touche. I'll let the Air Force decide.

Hopefully, neither marijuana nor booze will be among the cargo the Air Force wants launched.

 

[bobandsherry]

Swilling? More like sipping from what I saw.

Smoking? Well, yes. One puff.

I agree that both were not smart things to do in front of the media.

Later he comments on not being a regular weed smoker, smoking it almost never.

Oh, did you miss the part where the interviewer (a real potty mouth, IMHO) tries to get him to swear and he refuses to do it? Or talks about how using drugs keeps him from being productive and being useful?

Again, I must ask, who watched the entire interview? My guess is not many. I did.

I will ding him for letting himself be suckered into a trap, and not realizing how that lack of ethics in the modern media doesn’t prohibit exaggerating any minor faults a person exhibits. I bet he won’t make that mistake again.

If I was a Tesla stock holder I would find the interview reassuring. He looked reasonably healthy The guy is intelligent, still has a grand vision, and wants to help humanity work through its problems.

I have no idea if Tesla will succeed,fail or ? I don’t own the stock or one of their cars. Time will tell how they do.

Never let perfection become the enemy of the good.

All good points, but can you provide any reasonable explanation why Musk spent his limited free time going on some lame podcast? What was his motivation or what did he hope to achieve? Just another example of bad decision he makes, IMHO.

 

[Chuckanut]

All good points, but can you provide any reasonable explanation why Musk spent his limited free time going on some lame podcast? What was his motivation or what did he hope to achieve? Just another example of bad decision he makes, IMHO.

No, I can't. I can't explain why he thought he could land rocket boosters. Or, build reusable space craft. Or, why he would take on the big automakers and build EV car like the Model S. So what? He and his team did it anyway.

FWIW, I would advise him that the next time he feels like doing an interview with anybody in the media, instead he book a few days at one of those luxury hunting/fishing resorts in Canada. It would be much more relaxing and vastly less expensive.

Time to break out the popcorn and see how this all plays out.

 

[Totoro]

But lets consider the past few years to be the start of EVs commonly available for the masses (the Leaf, and we were supposed to have a $35,000 Tesla by now, but I wonder if one will ever be sold at that price?). Will EVs make up 50% of sales (let alone registrations, as cars last ~ 13~14 years on average?) in another 10~15 years? I doubt it. We will see.

Market dynamics and adoption rates have accelerated dramatically since 1910. What you see these days is dramatically faster uptake if a threshold is passed, a handful of years sometimes in new sales.

For EVs that's basically TCO vs. an ICE or hybrid engine, which translates into battery & electricity costs vs. fuel costs. Both sides of the equation are heavily influenced by tax rules and infrastructure.

Right now in the US current environment, you're probably right. One market shift or regulation change makes a big difference though. Belgium is one example where diesel cars went from majority to minority very fast with a relatively small tax adjustment. Other countries will be at 50% sooner - Norway already is -, some won't get there in 20 years.

Another factor is China. If they push hard for EVs, and it seems like they will, expect a large acceleration in the scale curve (and lower costs).

My personal bet at global scale is ~15 years for countries with decent electricity grids, ~5 to 10 years for Western Europe. But who knows.

 

[NW-Bound]

Again, I must ask, who watched the entire interview? My guess is not many. I did...

I am curious, but not enough to watch 2 hours of video. If there's a transcript, I will read it, being a fast reader.

FWIW, I would advise him that the next time he feels like doing an interview with anybody in the media, instead he book a few days at one of those luxury hunting/fishing resorts in Canada. It would be much more relaxing and vastly less expensive.

No, he will not, because he's a Type-A and enjoys the limelight. But relaxed and mellow people are not likely to be successful in business.

Recently, I read somewhere a psychologist saying that successful businessmen share some traits with psychopaths.

 

[braumeister]

Regardless of Tesla's success or failure, there has been so much written about them and other EVs that I think reading about them gave me the motivation to take a small step in that direction.

This year I bought a PHEV (Plug-in hybrid EV) and I love it.

I don't consider the cost of the car, because there is enough variation between them that it's hard to make any comparisons; I just buy the car I like best from what's available. I elected to get the PHEV mainly because I enjoy longer road trips and I needed the range of an ICE.

But the operation is pretty cool. Based on the typical cost of gas where I live and the cost of electricity at my home, a gas mile costs me about 12 cents and an electric mile about 4.5 cents.

 

[oneill225]

Market dynamics and adoption rates have accelerated dramatically since 1910. What you see these days is dramatically faster uptake if a threshold is passed, a handful of years sometimes in new sales.

For EVs that's basically TCO vs. an ICE or hybrid engine, which translates into battery & electricity costs vs. fuel costs. Both sides of the equation are heavily influenced by tax rules and infrastructure.

Right now in the US current environment, you're probably right. One market shift or regulation change makes a big difference though. Belgium is one example where diesel cars went from majority to minority very fast with a relatively small tax adjustment. Other countries will be at 50% sooner - Norway already is -, some won't get there in 20 years.

Another factor is China. If they push hard for EVs, and it seems like they will, expect a large acceleration in the scale curve (and lower costs).

My personal bet at global scale is ~15 years for countries with decent electricity grids, ~5 to 10 years for Western Europe. But who knows.

Noted.

 

[ERD50]

Back to Musk - I came across this in some searching, had seen it before, but maybe forgot that Musk had repeated it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elo...-how-the-electric-car-got-its-revenge-2011-10

"You have enough electricity to power all the cars in the country if you stop refining gasoline," says Musk. "You take an average of 5 kilowatt hours to refine [one gallon of] gasoline, something like the Model S can go 20 miles on 5 kilowatt hours."

Well!!! As I have said, I'm technology agnostic, I believe in solutions. So if that were true, it seems obvious that we should stop driving petroleum based cars, and drive EVs, to the maximum extent possible/practical.

Wait a minute... "if" it were true? That was Elon Musk talking, he's clearly a very bright, well informed, successful guy, and this is his field. He must be right, right?

Well, I'm pretty skeptical of things that seem that obvious. I mean, why aren't we just doing it (going all EV) then? I recall looking up the number of gallons we refine in the US, and overall electrical consumption that goes to industry. I had read 6 kWh originally, and either number times the gallons of gasoline refined in the US just made up such a huge % of the total industrial consumption, that it just seemed hard to believe that it wasn't common knowledge.

So when I saw it again, I did a deeper dive and opened a spreadsheet instead of a napkin (lots of zeroes to keep track of). So here you go:

Sources:
Refined annual:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp2_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm
Refined energy consumption annual:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm

I added up the various fuels (in thous bbl), multiplied by 42 g/bbl * 1000 ( comes to ~ 1..26x10^11). Divide the purchased kWh (4.86x10^10) by those gallons, and we get...

not 5 kWh. Not even 0.5 kWh, but 0.385 kWh. That is 385 watt-hours, about enough to drive an EV 1 mile, not the 20 miles that Elon said. But we must believe Elon, right?

Another easy calculation (nowhere near so many zeroes to keep trak of!) to see if this is in the realm of reality...

The industrial average for a kWh is $0.0691 ( source: .www.statista.com/statistics/190680/...-estimates-for-retail-electricity-since-1970/). So 5 kWh per gallon would be ~ $0.35 per gallon - just for the electricity to refine that gallon of gasoline.

But this source ( https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/ ) says that the JULY 2018 average gas price was $2.85/gallon, with 15% going to refining costs, and 15% = $0.43. If electricity made up 80% of refinery costs, it just seems there would be more awareness of that.

Apparently, this all comes from some twist of some study that said it took 6 kWh of energy to refine a gallon of gasoline. But much of that energy comes from waste (or impractical to market) products of the refining process itself. It's not like you can run a Tesla on some thick goey tar-like substance.

But the EV fans just eat these numbers up w/o question, and beg our politicians to subsidize EVs "for the children". I suggest they learn some math - for the children!

-ERD50