It's a government subsidized hobby for a rich kid genius who's good at science (well...sorta) and horrible at business. I know you guys are in love with the idea of Tesla, but it's a lot like "Popular Science" - mostly science fiction and hope and very little reality or production.
HT
6 comments:
Well, shit. How many times have other American auto-makers been bailed out over the past decades? Seems like automobile manufacturing, in general, is a losing business. Tesla might ultimately end up in the ditch, but they did prove the electric car can work, which is why Tesla is experiencing new competition from establish auto-makers in that exact space.
Elon Musk is nothing more than the reincarnation of P. T. Barnum, but with more money and less ethics.
Musk is good at the business of marketing/self-promotion, design and campaigning for subsidies, just not at the business of actually making cars. I cringe at the likely costs of his "hyperloop" and other proposals--he knows how to suck at the public teat, and that's scary.
From a technical perspective I love the idea of electric cars. Fewer moving parts should lead to fewer costs/repairs for the end user. The problem is our current tech is not up to the task. Power density of storage being the biggest problem. All the other issues are nothing but social issues.
That this isn't painfully fucking obvious to the so-called "brightest" among us speaks volumes.
Musk is totally full of it.
The main problem with electric cars is that the battery technology is currently not up to it. This is why it takes 8+ hours for a full (decent) charge - which only takes you 200-odd miles. So here's a little math:
My friend (works in the power industry) and I looked at the fast-charge technology vs the normal charge. Normal charge is 2.4kwh per hour for 8+ hours, fast-charge is 4.4kwh for 30 minutes to get to 80% charge. The numbers simply do not match, at 4.4kwh it would take 3+ hours to get up to 80% charge. Someone is telling porkies.
An inconvenient truth is where all that electricity is coming from. Currently it's from gasoline, they'd have to replace it with hydroelectric or nuclear or coal-fired (defeats the purpose entirely). Yet another inconvenient truth: the carbon and greenhouse gases from cars is less than 10% of what comes from industrial processes.
The final inconvenient truth: I can "charge" a beater in 5 minutes and go 600 miles on it, while carrying another "charge" in a jerrycan. Musk or whoever needs to match that performance to get any real traction.
Until then, he's just making another iPhone-style device for the yuppies drool and virtue-signal over.
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