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Having heard so much good about petrol cars, we decided to test drive one. They are said to combine cheap price with long range and fast charging. A winning formula on paper – but how are they in real life?
We sat us in the loaner car at the car salesman’s office. Automakers do not sell the cars themselves, only through independent car repair shops as middlemen. It may sound like a bad omen to buy the car from a car repair shop that you want to visit as seldom as possible. But you apparently can’t buy the car directly from the manufacturer but must go through such intermediaries. The seller was very “pushy” and tried to convince us to buy the car very forcibly, but the experience is perhaps better elsewhere.
So we sat in the car and pressed the START button. The car’s gasoline engine coughed to life and started to operate. One could hear the engine’s sound and the car’s whole body vibrated as if something was broken, but the seller assured us that everything was as it should. The car actually has an electric motor and a microscopically small battery, but they are only used to start the petrol engine – the electric motor does not drive the wheels. The petrol engine then uses a tank full of gasoline, a fossil liquid, to propel the car by exploding small drops of it. It is apparently the small explosions that you hear and feel when the engine is running.
The petrol engine consists of literally hundreds of moving parts that must have tolerance of hundredths of a millimeter to function. We begun to understand why it is car repair shops that sell the cars – they might hope for something to break in the car that they can mend?
We put in a gear and drove away with a jerk. The jerk came not from any extreme acceleration, but gasoline engines apparently cannot be driven as smoothly as electric motors. The acceleration did not occur at all, because we could not get the car to go faster than 40 km/h! By then the petrol engine literally howled and the whole car shook violently. Convinced that something must have broken we stopped the car. The seller then explained that with petrol engines you need to “change gears” on a regular basis. Between the engine and the wheels are not a fixed ratio gear, but a variable one. The petrol engine can produce power only in a limited speed range, and must therefore be geared with different ratios in order to continue to accelerate. There are 5 different gears we can select with increasing speed as result. It is -as we learned quickly- very important that each time select a suitable gear otherwise the engine will either stop or get seriously damaged! You need a lot of training to learn to select the right gear at the right time – though there are also models with automatic transmissions that can do this themselves. In the manual transmission car, we needed to constantly guard the engine from damaging it. Very stressful.
We asked if the constant sound of the engine -that frankly disturbed us from being able to listen to the radio- could be turned off. But it couldn’t. Very distracting.
After getting the car up to speed through intricate changing of gears we approached a traffic light. Releasing the accelerator pedal resulted in no significant braking, we had to use the brake pedal very much to slow down the car. We were surprised to hear the brakes are completely mechanical! The only thing they generate is heat – braking gives no regeneration of gasoline back into the tank! Sounds like a huge waste, but it would soon get even worse.
When we came to a stop the engine continued to run and the car vibrate – even though the car was standing still! The engine continued to burn gasoline without moving the car forward. Can it really be true? Yes, the seller explained, it is so with gasoline cars: the engine is always running and burning gasoline – even when the car is stationary. Some models however switches off the engine at a red light, he explained. Well that certainly makes more sense.
After a while we came to a gas station where we could charge the car. The car claimed that it still had half a tank left, but we wanted to try the famous super-fast charging of petrol cars!
So we drove to the gas station and opened the fuel cap. The filling nozzle is very similar to a charging connector, but it is not electrons that come out of it but gasoline. Gasoline is a highly carcinogenic, smelly and flammable liquid derived from plants and animals extinct since millions of years ago. The gasoline is pumped to a tank in the car, which then drives around with about 50 liters of this hazardous liquid in it.
We put the nozzle to the car, but nothing happened. The seller then explained that we must pay to fuel! Much like those extremely expensive fast chargers some electric utility companies have set up. After we put the credit card in the reader we could start fueling. It was extremely fast! In just two minutes we filled the gas tank to the max! But there were two counters on the pump: one that showed the number of liters we have fueled and one that showed how much it would cost us. And that counter was spinning so fast that we could hardly keep up with its pace! Sure we filled the tank full in two minutes, but it did cost us an unbelievable €30! A full charge would thus cost us double that – a whopping €60! We cursed our luck that we apparently have chosen one of the most expensive gas stations, and began to ask the seller what other alternatives are there? How much does it cost to fill up at home, and how many free stations are there?
The seller looked very puzzled at us and explained that it is not possible to refuel gasoline cars at home, and there are no free gas stations. We tried to explain our questions, in case he had misunderstood, but he insisted that you can not. Apparently you have to several times a month drive to the gas station to recharge your petrol car at extortionate prices – there are no alternatives! We thought it was very strange that no gasoline car manufacturers have launched their own free gas stations?
There are no gas stations either where you can fill up more slowly at a cheaper price. We started calculating price versus consumption and came to the shocking conclusion that a petrol car costs unimaginable €12 per 100km! Sure, electric cars could also theoretically come up to these amounts if they quick charged at one of the most expensive charging stations in the country – but for petrol cars there are no cheaper alternatives! While electric cars are comfortably charged at home every night for €2 per 100km petrol cars must make detours several times a month to fill up at these extortionate rates – without exception! Monthly cost for a petrol car can -just for the gasoline alone- easily exceed one hundred Euros! We begun to understand why they are so cheap to purchase – operating them is extremely expensive instead.
We also begun to understand why there must be so many petrol stations everywhere, if all petrol cars always have to drive to them to refuel. Imagine if you could charge your electric car only at the power companies’ most expensive fast chargers – and nowhere else!
With this in mind we ended up in a traffic jam and was horrified that the gasoline engine continued to burn these expensive gasoline drops even when the car was standing still or moving very little. With gasoline vehicles it is easy to run into cost anxiety – the feeling that the car literally burns up your money! No cheap home charging and no regeneration of gasoline back to the fuel tank when braking sounds like economic madness – especially given that all gasoline must be imported from abroad.
We returned the car to the dealer’s premises, pulled the handbrake and step out of the car. The petrol engine continued to run! Apparently one must manually switch off the combustion of the precious liquid. But we wanted to see the petrol engine, so the seller opened the bonnet. The entire front portion of the car was completely cluttered with hoses, fittings, fluid reservoirs, and amid all a huge shaking cast iron block which apparently constituted the motor’s frame. There was no space for luggage in the front of the car! Despite its enormous size, high noise and vibration, the engine barely delivered one hundred horsepower. The engine was also extremely hot, we burned ourselves when we touched it. Even though this was on a warm summer day so the engine did not need to generate heat to the passenger compartment.
We became also worried about what would happen if we crashed with a petrol car? The cast iron block that occupied most of the engine compartment was sitting in the middle of the collision zone! Where would it go if we collided – would we get it in our lap? The salesman assured us that the motor in such case somehow gets folded down under the car but we could not escape the impression that the engine block was very much in the way at the front – the safety beams were built around it, which surely impairs their functionality. Avoiding that one hundred kilo iron lump in the front of the car makes it so much easier to build safe cars. In addition, we have seen on the Internet hundreds of pictures and videos of burning gasoline cars. The petrol tank apparently often leaks after an accident so the flammable liquid pours out and becomes ignited!
From the engine, under the car runs an exhaust system – a kind of chimney for engine exhausts. When you burn the carcinogenic gasoline a lots of noxious gases are produced. The car cleans away the most dangerous gases, but what remains is released into the open air behind the car. It is still unhealthy to breathe in – and smells very bad! And petrol cars are allowed to emit these harmful gases in the middle of our cities? Do not confuse petrol cars’ exhaust pipes with fuel cell cars’ – while hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles emit only water vapor gasoline cars spew out noxious gasses, and even fossil carbon dioxide that contribute to Earth’s future-catastrophic warming!
We thanked the seller for the display, shook our heads and gave back the ignition key (yes, it’s called that) to him. He realized that there would be no business for him so except for one lame attempt he did not try to sell us the car any more.
On the way home in our electric car we looked with completely different eyes at our poor fellow commuters, who still had to put up with their gasoline cars. But soon it will be their turn to trade up, too!
You are welcome to read our other articles in English too.
Thank you thank you thank you, I have to send this to people.
Excellent 🙂
Well done guys!
That is excellent – great piece of writing.
great piece of writing??this guy is an idiot who doesnt even know how to drive a car
i quote “The seller then explained that with petrol engines you need to ”change gears””! who doesnt know how to recognise a manual car??or how to drive one??you would swear that this guy has been living in the rainforests all his life and only just seen modern technology
again quoting “We put in a gear and drove away with a jerk” thats another thing to show that theyre a really bad driver..nobody that knows how to drive does this, NOBODY! tell this person to go back and live in a cave until we fully develop computer driven veichels as he clearly doesnt know how to drive or even report on it
You are a very think and slow individual aren’t you? It’s like you are the only petrol fueled commentator amoung electric ones on this satiric text.
whooosh
Right over his head!
LOL. Good satire answer.
You’re a little slow, eh Brian?
Give him a break (a non-regenerative one) … his torque-challenged internal combustion brain is a little slow off the line …
Way to sound like a tardo
Hey!
I have the same problem, nearly had a crash in my (rarely driven) gas car — no regen brakes and it didn’t slow up. Also, I had to queue at a gas station — something I almost never do since refueling at home from off solar panels became the norm a few years back.
Love the satire.
You sir is extremely stupid and should not drive at all
Other than you obviously not being able to understand any form of irony, even if its splattered over the whole article, if the author really was a person never driving a gasoline car before, I could really understand his point of view. If you were used to a single speed gearbox and a flat torque curve from 0 rpm, a gasoline car feels jerky and finding the right gear would be a constant stress situation. Just think back at your first time driving a (manual) car.
I’m with Brian Munch on this. Well said, Brian.
Also, I hate these new-fangled computer “mice” that the kids are using now to control their “cursors” and move them around the screen. Those kids are idiots who don’t even know how to use a command line interface (CLI).
Who doesn’t know how to issue commands typed into a PC prompt? And all this whining that just one letter wrong in your command issues an error? Stop typing wrong! NOBODY who knows correct command syntax has this problem with the CLI. NOBODY! If you can’t write commands into a DOS window, then you shouldn’t use a computer.
Anyways, Brian and I think alike on these issues: If you know how to use the current clunky interface well, then any better interface is stupid.
… at least you don’t have to change the battery in an older mouse, and the wires make it more difficult to lose. Too bad they don’t make mice (and computers) that run on gas … then you would never have to plug them in – AWESOME! Of course, it would cost more, it would not be convenient to fill up, you would have explosive fuel in your home, and you would have to breath in all the fumes … but, other than that, awesome!
Regarding that, I suggest you watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=767XHA5KQKY
Wow! You don’t understand the article, its perspective or its purpose do you? Lmao!!
I wonder what you would think if you read Voltaire, Candid
sarcasm….look it up!
This piece of writing is designed for people with triple digit IQs. To explain: This a parody of someone coming back from the future who has never seen a dinosaur internal combustion engine vehicle before and outlining is sheer ridiculousness
This is the funniest comment ever! Either a Troll, or a clueless wonder. Or both.
Ha ha. Nice one. Some people will think that you meant this. 😉
When cars such as this are parked in enclosed garages, they must be very well ventilated to avoid asphyxiating people. Quite dangerous!
Well, charging some batteries also requires ventilation for both heat and hydrogen build up, which also be dangerous.
You’re taking about lead-acid batteries?
This is 2015 isn’t it? Make sure you charge your cell phone in a well-ventilated area. The call the new technology Lithium Ion.
I know. I actually used my car’s heating to heat my unheated garage recently when I needed to dry the paint in the winter… couldn’t do that with a gasoline car…
Meh. Did you try that in $85,000.00 gasoline engine car such as BMW?
It turns out that even an $85,000 BMW still requires expensive trips to the gas station, still pollutes and vibrates, still requires tuneups, still doesn’t have storage under the bonnet, still continues to run when stuck in traffic, and still can’t out-accelerate a Tesla P85D. Meh.
> expensive trips to the gas/electricity station. Does not really matter.
> pollutes – I’m ok with it so far
> tuneups? I have 4 times cheaper Honda Insight. Even it does not require any kind of tuneup. Or I don’t understand what do you mean by it
> storage is nice, but if you want storage, you can get SUV or a small truck
> out-accelerate – OK, don’t need it most of the time anyway
So… why are we comparing to a BMW? I was merely trying to figure out your comment, and reply in a relevant fashion.
You’re OK with expensive gas and pollution. And your cheap Honda is not in the same class (You seem to care that your car is 4x cheaper, but you don’t care or realize that electricity is 4x cheaper as a fuel). And you don’t care about storage or acceleration. So again… why do you wish to compare to a high-performance BMW… or any other car, for that matter? I don’t ask this to be rude. I’m genuinely confused at your original “Meh” comment. If you find an $85k BMW to be boring, then I guess you’d find the Tesla to be boring too. So what interests you here?
I’m actually quite excited about Tesla, just trying to point out, that it is unfair to compare $85,000 Tesla with some abstract gasoline car, which happens to not have CVT or at least automatic transmission, noticeably vibrates while standing still, and has small compartment. For that much you can definitely pick a gasoline car, which will not have any of these disadvantages (apart from not having very high acceleration, which you are personally won’t likely use often).
Plus some other points like fueling process are exaggregated, especially given that electric cars also require it.
I believe that the point of the article was merely to point out the absurdity of how many people describe EVs as if they are inferior to gas cars. Don’t get mired in the details of the type or class of vehicle.
I have owned cars with CVT and automatic transmissions. There is NOTHING there to compare to a fixed-gear EV. Yes, expensive modern cars don’t generally require manual gear shifts. But again… that was merely to point out the absurdity of needing to change gear ratios somehow to get a gasoline car to function properly. Something not needed in EVs.
And make no mistake – the fueling process is not exaggerated. Especially not the cost part. Those who still pay for their electricity pay 1/4th to 1/5th the price of petrol. Personally, I have paid *nothing* for my EV fuel in over ten years. Ten years ago my PV system loan was paid off. For the rest of my life, I will have free fuel. And that fuel will be dispensed into my car while I sleep. To date I have driven 130k miles on free, clean fuel. THAT is something that should excite you regardless of how much storage or acceleration a car has.
IMHO, absurd example is not very good to show absurdity of someones opinion. If the point of the post to convince people, than I can with certainty say, that those, who have huge compartments, fancy transmissions, etc will just shrug and pass by.
I don’t think the point of this is to really compare the two. The point of this, is to show the world from a point of view so completely different, that your eyes might just pop open. I don’t drive an EV and I don’t own one. I did however enjoy this article very much.
I will try to find time to translate this to Polish. Well, unless someone beats me to it…
The electrity in USA is produced with fossils mostly. In fact 38% all fossil co2 comes from making electricity.
100% of gasoline is produced with fossil fuels. None of my solar electricity is produced with fossil fuels. You have little choice in fuel source with gasoline cars. You have a HUGE choice of fuel source for electricity. Heck, you can even make electricity by burning gasoline if you wish.
So we should definitely produce high energy fuels using CO2 from the air and solar power. Its just as environmentally friendly, and we save weight on batteries and have better charging times.
@ schaep – that sounds GREAT! Yet in the meantime, we can’t very well sit around and wait for that lovely utopia. The perfect being the enemy of the good and all that. Sadly, it’s the same argument that the fuel cell folks have offered: Don’t require us to make battery cars! They don’t go far enough, and they take to long to charge! Nobody wnats that. Let us promise to make fuel cell cars at some point in the future that run on the laughter of children and rainbows. We’ll have those right out in…10. Or 15. Or 20 years. Or well, at some point. In the meantime, please continue on with the gasoline while we figure this out. Oh, and ignore Tesla.
Cheers,
Darell
Wait for what? They are called liquid biofuels and are available now. We just need ignorant governments like in the UK to wake up to it and legislate for the masses rather than just say all new petrol and diesel car sales are banned and no hybrids purely based on tailpipe emissions and nothing else (such as wheel to well). Liquid biofuels can also be transported and dispensed through normal filling stations. There are trucks in the UK running on it now. Biomethane is 100% renewable and CO2 neutral, even negative in some cases. Other emissions are considerably lower too. Don’t really need cars that weigh double wearing out the roads faster do we. It’s easy for someone with plenty of money to act as righteous as you, but what about the average working man? Biofuels will provide more environmentally friendly and affordable transport for all people. The added bonus is that it will be great for the Motorsport and performance industry. No one will be excited by a Tesla at a car show lol.
The share of electricity that is made with fossil fuel varies from region to region. If you’re in the US and want to know what share of your power is fossil-based, go to this website and put in your ZIP (postal) code: http://oaspub.epa.gov/powpro/ept_pack.charts
Even the worst regions have some renewables in the mix. And as the cost of renewables continues to fall more and more renewables are added, so your electric car gets cleaner without you needing to do a thing.
Cars with horsepower of Model S and CVT simply does not exists.
Most powerful CVTs can handle only oround 200 hp and still not very reliable.
Don’t your electrons at the charging station get produced by carcinogenic carbon based fuels at a power station?
Not in the midle of the city at least. And there are other sources like wind, hydro, solar, tidal, nuclear, and so on…;-)
Agree but it is a little disingenuous to pretend that there is no environmental cost to an electric car. One main advantage as I see it over the internal combustion engine is it removes reliance away from solely oil, we have the option of producing energy for electric cars in other ways. If the world switched to electric tomorrow I seriously doubt renewables alone would cope with demand.
>> If the world switched to electric tomorrow I seriously doubt renewables alone would cope with demand. <<
It is probably a good thing that this "switch technology tomorrow" will never happen. As I said above, when gas cars were inflicted on the word, there were no gas stations. Not one! Gasoline alone couldn't cope with demand! Yet here we are. Somehow we made it work, didn't we? I have great confidence in the human race to adapt.
Sure. It would cause havoc if well all switched overnight. And we would have tremendous infrastructure challenges to fix. Although our habitat would be far better off those were the problems we sought to fix.
What if we proposed a 10-year switch? Would that also be disastrous? All I know is that a 50-year transition is too @#$@# slow.
“Agree but it is a little disingenuous to pretend that there is no environmental cost to an electric car.”
Strawman. No one is claiming that.
“If the world switched to electric tomorrow I seriously doubt renewables alone would cope with demand.”
Your argument is based on thing that will not happen. Worthless.
Nope. 200% of mine (yes, literally) are produced from the sun. I produce 2x as much energy as my house and my car can use.
You need to read my other reply… can you guarantee that every time you recharge you will be doing so off renewables. If the whole world suddenly switched to electric would we be able to power cars off renewables? (I don’t know the answer by the way just asking the questions) Incidentally how do you generate twice as much electricity via the sun as you need? How many solar panels have you got and which part of the world do you live?
Hi Tim. Nobody is pretending that there are no environmental costs to EVs. All transportation – including walking – has negative environmental effects. Our goal is to choose the least destructive option. And for personal, high-speed, long-distance travel, BEV is currently the best we’ve got.
Can I guarantee that every time I charge my car that it will be off of renewables? No. What I CAN guarantee is that every time a gas car is filled, it is off of “non-renewables” however. Horrible, deadly, polluting fossil fuels. Every time. When my cars are charged at home, they are charged from the sun. And I charge at home about ~98% of the time.
We will not “suddenly switch to EVS”, so there’s no reason to fret over that scenario. When gas cars took over the world, it was a slow, painful process. There were no gas stations when gas cars started! The same thing is happening with EVs. We adapt when we need to. And certainly we need to.
And finally… It isn’t hard to generate twice as much electricity as I use. The number of panels is irrelevant (I have 20 if you feel that is important). What matters is how much electricity I make, and how much I use. I have a 5 kW system, and I live in the central valley of CA. Today I generated 41 kWh, and I consumed 18. If I lived in the absolutely worst solar location in the US, my 5kW system would merely produce 100% of what I use.
Cheers,
Darell
I’m no expert on Solar but surely the amount of electricity you can collect is proportional to the surface area i.e. is related to # of panels? The reason I ask is that my 2 bed terrace in London doesn’t have much roof space and last time I checked if I covered the entire roof with solar panels, I would have only generated about 15% of my energy needs for the house and would have had an ROI in excess of 20 years. Could I put your 5kW system on my house? and how long would it take to re-coup the costs?
I say the number of panels is irrelevant only because panels come in a variety of sizes shapes and efficiencies. My system happens to be 20 panels. I can build a 5 kW system using 10 panels, and I can build a 5 kW system using 40 panels. The question to ask is how much surface area, not the number of panels. In big, round numbers it takes 100 sq feet per installed kW at a middle-of-the road panel efficiency assumption. Or to put it another way, you can install a system of any size in less than 100 sq feet per kW.
The rest of your questions cannot be answered without knowing your consumption, and the surface area of your home. I’d have to look up the insolation tables for London… and then we could quickly determine what size system you’d need. You would have to then inquire locally about installation costs. Note again that my system is 2x the size that I need, and everybody’s needs are different. I over-sized mine a) because I have plenty of surface area on my home, b) installation was easy for me, c) this is how I choose to donate some of my money to a cause that helps us all.
The only thing more expensive than installing solar power, is not installing solar power.
Thanks Darrell it was 4 or 5 years ago when I looked into it so it could be that the technology is more efficient and the costs more favourable now. I’ll re-visit based on your comments certainly I’m in favour of re-balancing our reliance on oil.
Tim – you are welcome! Definitely check in on solar again. Costs have dropped significantly in the past five years. It sounds like your biggest hurdle will be the minimal surface area you have to work with. But a skilled designer can do some creative things to optimize what you’ve got. Good luck!
In Seattle and some other areas the utility company will allow people to purchase solar panels that it installs where space is available. I charge my electric car in a neighborhood with solar panels on the roof of nearby buildings that is otherwise fed from hydropower.
Hi Tim,
In the Netherlands we have cooperations that combine the need for renewable energy for people who live in an apartment or a house with the roof at an unfavorable angle for solar panels.
I personally have a (small) share in a wind turbine that covers the energy usage of my house and my car. My share in the wind turbine and my energy usage are compensated on my energy bill. The same thing is being done with solar panels. The soccer (football) stadium in the city of Groningen is now partly covered with 1092 solar panels paid for by locals for whom solar on their own house doesn’t work.
Maybe there are similar possibilities where you live.
Thanks Ad, good suggestion very resourceful you Dutch 🙂
Solar is getting cheaper every year, very very fast. If the numbers don’t work out for you this year, look again in two years — the price is typically dropping *THAT* fast.
Thank you so much Darelldd, this is the most brilliant statement about solar power i have ever read: “The only thing more expensive than installing solar power, is not installing solar power.” Simply amazing. … We have installed a 5 kW solar panels recently too, and i think this is a wonderful thing. Still saving up for a Tesla, though… ^^ The new batteries from Tesla are even opening up the option of using 100% solar produced electricity all day long. – Simply amazing!
“last time I checked if I covered the entire roof with solar panels, I would have only generated about 15% of my energy needs” –Tim
Must the panels be located on your roof? I mean, you don’t have a coal mine on your roof right now, do you? Is there some reason it is impossible for a third party company to set up a solar farm outside the city, and to sell you the energy?
I’m not saying that should happen, I’m just countering your “gotchas” to darelldd that your roof space is too small.
I mean, you seem perfectly content to have a third party burn coal, natural gas, or uranium nuclei to provide you with power from afar delivered through the grid…is there some reason you believe wind, solar, or tidal could not be supplied in the same fashion?
If you are really interested in reducing your use of fossil fuels, try to make your house more efficient. (insulation, different lighting, new more efficient refrigerator?) This would allow any solar array you add in the future to cover more of your need for energy. And it will help you save money, always a good thing.
If you feel you can’t handle it financially, wait. Solar power is getting cheaper and more efficient all the time. Check again every two or three years to see if the price has come down and the power output has come up enough to make an installation worthwhile. In the meantime, urge your politicians to support more wind power. Great Britain uses significant amounts of wind for electricity but there’s still room for more.
When (not if) you finally put solar panels on your roof, even if they don’t cover your house’s entire need for electrical power, they still strike a small blow against the dirty and dangerous use of coal for generating electricity. There’s no law anywhere that says you can’t have solar panels unless they can supply your entire need for electricity.
“can you guarantee that every time you recharge you will be doing so off renewables.”
What you can guarantee is that renewables are added to generation both on the grid and on the consumer side in tandem, in economic synergy and at a faster pace than EVs are added to consumption.
While individual choice matters, what really matters is the healthy economic trend and where it leads at scale.
At least with electric cars we have choice of where we can source our fuel, unlike with a gas-burner car.
Superb!
Sub tle!
Absolutely brilliant, thank you for such a wonderful piece of EV writing. I will share this url the most I can.
€60 to fill up? That is half a tank in ours ICEs. You drive around sitting next to a tank of explosive fuel and people ask about EV batteries catching fire?? I would share this with everyone, known or unknown but I fear they would not appreciate it. I do however! =)
The real issue is putting out EV battery fires. Right now, the infrastructure (including fire fighting) is designed around ICE vehicles. Gradually we are seeing the tools for electrical fires being added to fire fighter arsenals, but being the rarer option, it is more expensive and has slower adoption. Of course, worrying about EV battery fires is much like worrying about a gas leak in an ICE – neither is anywhere near as common as the media would have you believe.
That said, having a Tesla catch on fire takes long enough to casually finish the text message you were typing when you caused the wreck, gather your belongings out of the car, and have a nice lunch before you need to evacuate. Unlike an ICE fire which goes up rather quickly.
Actually an EV can burn slower or faster than a ICE car, depending on the cause. The petrol powered car is most dangerous at 1/8 of a tank of fuel, and the EV is most dangerous at a full charge. Since Tesla’s have the room for fire suppression system, perhaps that is a good idea. Something that gives the driver time enough to remove to children from child seats, even after the batteries short due to a collision.
“The real issue is putting out EV battery fires.”
No, it really isn’t. EV’s don’t explode – unlike fossil-fuel vehicles.
Neither vehicle actually explodes. Gasoline can create a fireball if leaked, and the tank can explode if the air mix is right, and the lithium batteries in an EV can burst and create significant fires. Both are extremely rare. The difference is that gasoline fires are much faster in their initial spreading, while electrical and lithium battery fires require special materials to put out.
Actually, the instructions for putting out a Lithium Ion battery fire is quite simple – flood it with large amounts of water. This isn’t elemental lithium we’re talking about here in batteries, so it doesn’t react with water. Just need to get the temperature down below thermal runaway point. The instructions for putting out gasoline fires are not quite as simple – flood with water, chemicals, and foam to contain the fire and keep it from spreading until it burns itself out because it’s next to impossible to extinguish a gasoline fire.
I am going to trust the several firemen from different areas I have talked to about what they do and what equipment they recently bought over one opinion on the internet.
No need to take my word for it.
Feel free to read the Tesla first responders guide for yourself. http://www.teslamotors.com/firstresponders
Or watch this video produced by Ron Moore and Brock Archer, the top authority on vehicle extrication and first responder training. https://youtu.be/jCoUhy2Ypb8
The steps for extinguishing a Model S are as follows:
1. Do not puncture the pack.
2. Flood it with water.
That’s it. You can see how quickly a really bad Model S fire can be put out in this video, from a 100mph crash in Mexico 2 years ago where the driver (drunk) walked away. About 10 seconds to extinguish once the fire truck arrives. https://youtu.be/RCn1CufaCYc
Compare this to the firey crashes that claimed the lives of Paul Walker or Michael Hastings, both of which burned uncontrollably with them inside (caution, graphic video) https://youtu.be/3LSY3wVuASg
I know which I’d rather take my chances in.
This article, while well written, is ridiculous… it only makes sense if you are comparing regular gasoline-powered cars that are in the Tesla’s extremely high price range. Comparing a Tesla with “a petrol car” (which can be bought for 10 times less) makes as much sense as comparing the intricate stitching and materials of a Louis Viutton handbag with a cheap knock-off. Someone may not need the more expensive option if the cheaper one is good enough and fits their budget!
Yes, the Tesla is faster and more advanced than cheap petrol cars. Who knew?
Tesla owners should NOT be snobs, as this article is suggesting. Next time, compare the Tesla with BMW M5’s, Mercedes E-class AMG and just say the obvous: a Tesla is faster, safer, more spacious, silent, has zero tailpipe emissions and costs pennies to run.
This show the future. Dont you think otherd will come up with Tesla range EVs also?
I’m not sure I like this future if it takes hours to charge my car. The Tesla is an awesome machine and I’m sure it suits a lot of people, but until they start using fuel cells or drop-out/drop-in batteries to take the “refuelling” time down from hours to minutes, it’s not a solution for me.
My “future” has already arrived and I like it a lot! At Tesla Super Charging Stations (located 150 miles or less away from my Model S at any point in the US) it takes approximately half an hour to get a full charge. (Forget the “hours” concern.)
However, my most frequent charging location is my garage. I simply plug in my cell phone as well as my car before I go to sleep at night. I then wake up every morning with a full “tank.” Until you no longer have to regularly source your “fuel” at a gas station, you simply cannot imagine how convenient it is to “fill up” at home.
But back to your “hours” concern, it takes ME 8 hours to charge myself up at night ; ] If my Tesla were fully depleted, a full charge would take 3 1/2 hours for the car. But what do I care? I am asleep. Plus my Tesla range is so great (265 miles) that the car is never completely empty. At this point I can truthfully say I will never again choose the time-consuming inconvenience of a damn gas station. It takes me about 60 seconds to plug in my car. How long does it take you to drive to the gas station and fill up while standing there smelling the noxious fumes?
Linda really takes her time to meticulously plug in! Plugging in takes about four seconds of my time. WAY less than I spend driving out of my way, and standing around while I dump carcinogens into my tank (Not to mention all the extra hours of working for wages to pay for that fuel, or the extra hours and money spent on taking the car in for tune-ups and oil changes).
I have several hundreds of thousands of miles of gas car experience. And I have a couple hundred thousand miles of EV experience. I can confidently say that EVs *are* a solution for me, and I have no idea why people are willing to waste so much time with gas cars.
And you don’t have to queue to pay for the petrol behind 25 people who are paying for coffee and bagels!
I certainly hope so. And so does Tesla and Elon Musk.
Who is to say that this article is NOT comparing to a gas powered car in Tesla’s price range? Which part of the article implied that the test drive was of an economy car?
>> a Tesla is faster, safer, more spacious, silent, has zero tailpipe emissions and costs pennies to run. <<
And in case it is not obvious – the Tesla is OH so much more fun to drive.
“Barely 100hp motor”
Ah! Good point. My bad.
Don’t let the details get in the way of the message though!
I agree. That part of the story surprised me. I thought “Hmmm. That doesn’t fit the framework.” If 260HP were written, the storyline would have flowed more smoothly.
“The engine was claimed to be 100hp but it turns out that it can produce no power at all at the most important moment- starting out at 0 RPM. To try to get started, power wasting kludges such as clutches and torque converters are used to prevent the engine from stalling. So the actual power delivered to the wheels at a start is far less than advertised.
Expensive petrol cars don’t operate by exploding tiny droplets of expensive carcinogenic fuel even when they are stopped in traffic?! Who knew!
excellent writing 😉
Hej Tibor, great article, I love it.
You might want to put it up on the TMC forum as well (in a separate thread), as suggested by someone there.
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/46620-ICE-Trip?p=991618&viewfull=1#post991618
It is already there: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/46574-Test-drive-of-a-petrol-car
Crush all of these fuel-driven beasts of burden and guess what… no more electric cars can ever be built either.
Maybe we should just crush the useless ones, and keep the useful ones?
I think that when the electric car goes 1000 km for 5-10 usd we are making progress in the climate.
oh, that’s possible. easily.
… but practically noone needs that. and it’d be pretty expensive.
Name a single transportation technology that can do that.
Hi, I translated article to russian. http://geektimes.ru/post/249794/
If you want, add my translation.
Btw, GREAT article!
Great! Thanks! Added!
5 languages so far. Cool!
This is great!
I translated it to danish – hope it is ok 🙂
http://tesladanmark.dk/proevekoersel-af-benzinbil/
Great! Add a link to this page to your text and we will add it to our list of translations!
Thanks! I added a link back to this page 🙂
Hi Tibor. I would like to ask for a permission to translate the work into Chinese. Is that alright?
Hi! Yes it is OK. Please include a link to this page. If you put a link to your page here I will include it into the translation list at the top of the page.
Chinese translation: http://xie-dongping.github.io/电动车/2015/05/14/试驾燃油动力车（翻译）/
Where can I send Finnish translation? We don’t have Tesla-forums in Finland yet.
Finnish translation can be found in: https://simorover.atavist.com/bensiiniautonkoeajo9hzgf
awesome!
Spread the humor!
P.S. Thanks immensely to your forebears for beating the Nazis. Good job.
excellent!!! – I love it, can we set a link at our web page? Fritz Vogel, ENIO Austria, http://www.enio.at
Sure, of course you can link to it!
The EPA’s MPGe for Tesla is essentially government-sponsored propaganda based on the kWh energy content in of a gallon of gas. Based on the number of gallons of fuel a diesel generator would actually require to produce a net amount of electricity after transmission losses to a consumers’ garages to charge their batteries, a Tesla actually gets about 34 MPG; and, that’s not including the fuel it takes to manufacture the batteries. If all cars were electric the nation would essentially be energy-dependent on China for the rare earth materials required to make the batteries. Pointing to hydroelectric power makes no sense because that is legacy-power from previous generations who used a lot of fossil fuel to construct these dams. And, can you imagine the regulatory hurdles that would bar doing now what our grandfathers did then in constructing another, Hoover dam? Heavily subsidized wind and solar power to generate electricity clearly is no panacea either and Left-thinking people are lynx-eyed against nuclear energy to make electricity. Japan has gone hydrogen because they fear dependence on China for rare earths.
There are no rare earth metals in these batteries, you silly, but Fuel cells do use them, ironically. I don’t know if you’re ignorant or just uninformed. Comments like yours are cringe worthy, and I am sick of them.
You can shoot can the messenger but it does not change the facts that rare earth metals are essential for the solar cells that are needed to generate the electricity to charge the battery if you want to be free of, e.g., diesel generators, nuclear power and utilities fueled by natural gas or – cringe… coal – right?
There are no rare earths in solar cells. Mostly Silicon, Oxygen and Aluminium, the most abundant elements on the planet. A little plastic glue…
Have a nice day 🙂
Looks like you win. My response was deleted.
Japan are concerned about China’s rare earths because of hard drives, the main consumer of rare earth magnets. No other industry gives a damn about rare earths because they don’t use them. Hard drives are the only motor/generator where you can’t just go 100% copper coil.
Nuclear is cool but more expensive than solar or wind. Latest UK nuclear bid was ~$170/MWh. I can get solar on my roof for $110/MWh or wind for $70/MWh. Brazil does wind at $40/MWh (no subsidies).
I suppose you power your house with an internal combustion generator out in the yard, eh?
40% of the nation’s electrical grid is powered by burning coal and over time coal as a fuel is being replaced with natural gas. Anyone who believes any appreciable amount of the energy it takes to charge a car battery is the product of the energy of the sun being converted into electricity by clean solar panels is doubly misinformed — these panels are not the clean technology they’re made out to be.
Anyone who denies that EVs *enable* us to clean up our transportation energy supply, in a way that ICE and hybrids can never do, is making excuses for their own inertia.
Concentrated solar power projects can only be built with federal loan guarantees and mainly exist due to state mandates. When it all sounds too good to be true, check to make sure the science has been manipulated to give the answer people want to hear, the facts be damned. An interesting demonstration of,”just how easy it is to turn bad science into the big headlines,” can be seen here:
http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800?utm_source=nextdraft
I was so excited during the whole text. Damn right! It’s a shame those poor people still have to drive IC cars. Turning that into a video review would be pretty awesome as well.
Fantastic article. Great job. Mind if I translate it to Spanish? We may try to do a video version with a friend too if that is ok with you.
There is no way back! Electric cars are here!
Brilliant! Although I have to admit, shifting gears is a fun and enjoyable part of driving – keeps you awake and makes you feel connected to the drive.
Hahahahahaha 😀
Dutch translation over here: https://jtlm.be/tesla.php
This story is art.
amusing, but somewhat cringe-worthy at times.
Since you seem so confused by the gear shift lever, could you explain how the simple Tesla computers work? I can’t even figure out how to turn on the radio (since there’s no volume knob, or buttons), much less configure the steering wheel. Yes, apparently that is a thing you need to do in a Tesla, because it’s not just a “wheel” to “steer” the car, as one might expect. You actually have to program the steering wheel to do other things … like control the radio.
This is hilarious. Thanks for writing it.
Can someone share this with Elon Musk? 😛
Elon Musk have already tweet it
lol That was pretty darn funny!
You forgot tot mention that the electric car costs at least 5 times more than the gasoline based ones.
Forgot? It turns out that the Leaf (as just one example) costs less than the average price of a new car sold in the USA today. By several thousand dollars. Does several thousand less = 5x more?
Government incentives…
My response was to the cost of the car. If we wish to speak of “government incentives” we’ll have to talk about the billions of dollars that the oil and gas industry enjoys. And then we get off on a tangent from which there is no return. I’d be happy to level the playing field completely. But that will mean taking subsidies away from all those things that we hold near and dear (at least here in the US).
As so was my comment. The cost to produce an electric car is very high and that was what Chris was saying. To lower the cost and to make it more affordable, there are government incentives. Why are you mentioning government incentives on the oil and gas industry. That is a completely unrelated topic and is not relevant to the point Chris was trying to make at all.
Strip government incentives, and the Leaf costs about the same as the average gasoline car sold in America. If I stop there, is my comment more relevant?
The cost to produce an electric car is “very high.” Yes. So is the cost to produce a gasoline vehicle. For a car like the Leaf to be 5x the price of a gasoline based car, we’d need to compare it to a gasoline car that costs $5,000 USD. Yet the Leaf compares to cars that cost… about the same as Leaf.
I brought up the oil and gas incentives, because for some reason we’re making gasoline car ownership “more affordable” by subsidizing the fuel for those cars. And I thought that might be relevant to the idea that electric cars are “more affordable” because of incentives. I did not mean to offend.
Well, I’ll try again.
The average cost of a car in the US: Over $31,500
The price of a new Leaf before any government incentives: $$29,010
Chris’s comment was that electric cars cost “at least 5x more than gasoline based ones.” And this is not true. In fact it isn’t even close to true. We’d have to compare the Leaf to some car that costs $$6,000! And yes, we offer government incentives because people are in general scared to try anything new. The incentives can bring the cost down to about $20,000. Even further from “5x more than a gas car.”
I only brought up the incentives for oil and gas to point out that not only do electric cars NOT cost “at least 5x more than gasoline based ones” but that we also subsidize the ownership (in the form of operating expenses) of gas cars.
Tesla actually has managed to undersell the gasoline cars that are comparably big, well made and luxurious, while performing just as well if not better, and using less than half the energy of the most efficient hybrids.
Got your point. From a simplistic point of view in which a car is seen only as a way of transportation, pretty much, you are right. However I think anybody should forget that those monstrous critters described in here, are the parents and grand parents of any electric car, and history is not discrete but continuous, so any technology modern electric cars has, come from a previous fuel car. Also, there is a groups of people (including me) for what driving a car is much more that only go from A to B. I personally enjoy a lot the rev of the engine, the smell of gasoline, and also I feel completely amazed every time I think in all the engineering and human knowledge required in the construction of a modern internal combustion engine. I think we as humanity should find a better way to move around our environment, but I don’t think we should see one of our creations as an aberrant being, I think we better should think about it as a beautiful and masterful piece of engineering and art that became obsolete.
What are these ‘cars’ and why would I want one instead of a bicycle?
OK. You win.
No, wait, I have a comeback: Rain, Snow, Ice, Cargo, Children, Range, Speed.
But cycling is fantastic when it fits.
That is great!
Excellent! Thanks for sharing this piece…
And we poor fucks who have to wait for the Model 3… 🙁 🙁 🙁
I would like to watch this article as a script for a show or a video.
Really good text!
Fantastic, you made my day ! 😀
Use $40000 to buy good diesel car, use $40000 to diesel fuel, using 60 liter tank you get 840 tanks of diesel. 900km per tank, you get 756 000 “free” kilometers. And you only have to stop every 900km to refuel for 2 minutes. Even if you put that $40000 in half you get 375 000 km which is more than most people drive in 15 years. Sooo i wouldn’t take the fueling issue that seriously.
Your math all works very well.
…If you don’t “believe in” or take any responsibility for the economic external costs.
And the external costs of solar panel industry (toxic, rare eath mine wastelands in China for example) and the destruction of landscape for windmills?
“Belief” is just right. Green ecology is a religion.
There aren’t rare earths in solar panels. It’s silicon, glass, aluminium, plastic. Mostly made from the 3 most abundant elements on the planet (O,Si, Al). Toxic and CO2 emissions in manufacture far lower than any fossil energy per kWh.
Wind turbines take up very little space, usually about 1% of the land (mostly roads). Not very destructive. In fact they are less land intensive than coal per kWh.
Have a nice day 🙂
If you want, google energy density of various forms of energy. Green energy produces little energy at high cost, financially as well as environmentally. No faith sentence will change that fact. This is the real world: windmills and solar panels (the producing of steel, cement, glass, the melting of silica rock) take temperatures well beyond 1000° C. These temperatures are obtained with carbon fuels. In some future, they will be via nuclear. The “four treasures” of our civilization (cement, glass, steel, ceramics) (as well as all other blessings of modern civilization, btw.) will always need grown-up, cheap, reliable energy to be produced.
The energy payback for solar is about 1 year for a product that has a 20 year warranty. No-one really knows how long they last -no moving parts.
Energy payback for wind is 6 to 8 months. Google Vestas V112 LCA if you don’t believe me.
Latest nuclear cost in the developed world: Hinkley C tender ~$180/MWh, cost of wind $70-100/MWh, solar $100-160/MWh. In the developing world renewables are often the cheapest energy option because construction is cheaper and fuel is free. In the developed world renewables are competitive with new fossil projects, but not yet with existing plant. It’s only a matter of time as the old fossil plant is retired. The cost is dropping so quickly that the economics when you decided to be against them are completely irrelevant now.
The materials you mention are expensive to produce with electricity rather than coal, however they represent a smaller portion of CO2 emissions compared with transport and electricity. When we do begin to use clean electricity to produce industrial materials solar and wind will be much, much cheaper than nuclear.
Interesting report.
I note that no mention of re-use was made, so the end of life recovery may be better than suggested in the report.
It may be that the wind industry is still too young to have arrived at enduring designs with a lot of re-use potential, but I would expect that the foundations would have a 100 year life, the towers probably close and the low frequency electrical to be 60 or years or more.
I agree on most part. My criticism is mostly against the price of the vehicle. If your car costs 2x what normal car costs, “free” fuel doesn’t really convince anyone. I’m waiting to see what Tesla can bring out with 3-series and what range/price they achieve.
Well, true. But consider that the Ritz or Kapinski is better than an Ibis or Motel 6. The luxury offers a better quality experience. Some are willing to pay for that speed, style, silence, reliability, and size of Model S, others won’t. That’s fine. For sure, if saving money were the only goal, then a diesel Ford Focus (or similar) starts to look much better.
But Model S is not the first car to cost US$75-120k. And comparing it to a car half its price is not an apples to apples comparison – it’s Ritz to Ibis. If you compare Model S to a BMW M5 or 7 Series – which is a very fair comparison – then the free fuel starts to sound good.
The EV revolution starts with a first shot, and wins when the masses arrive at the barricades. The Model S is nothing but the first shot, and the 3, if it succeeds, will be where the masses rise up. But we don’t have a Model 3 without a Model S. The first shot matters.
I have yet to meet M5 owner who cared about fuel prices a lot. I was thinking car like Volkswagen Passat when i thought my message. It has similar size, it is quality car and offers good range of different engines including diesels. You don’t lose much with Passat to Tesla but price difference is huge.
Maybe. But refueling is undesirable for ALL wealth levels. And as a general rule of thumb, the less one cares about the price of fuel, the MORE one cares about the 10 minute delay.
Example: A lawyer who bills $500/hour will care just a little about the $70 refuel charge. But the loss of 10 minutes more than doubles the cost of the fuel.
The End of ICE: Genius Elon Musk Starts The Race To The Bottom Of Energy Storage Prices.
Elon Musk’s genius is that by opening patents for energy storage he will employ huge capital and manufacturing base in China. Lithium cells will become commodity with copycats for his PowerWall and PowerPack. Ability to produce the lithium battery is one thing, power of the brand and packaged solution with Solar is another. I think that Chinese companies even here will succeed very fast. To produce Tesla Model S or coming Tesla Model III is completely different story. You do not really expect a lot from your PowerWall – just to be safe and functional. The battery for the electric car is completely different story, as your beloved car itself. This is where Tesla will rule for the long time and, maybe, Apple can actually get very fast traction after outsourcing power-train to Tesla and employing its own brand power and pile of cash.
http://kirillklip.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/end-of-ice-genius-elon-musk-starts-race.html#
Bring the price down on them! I’d love to own one but holy cow the payments are as much as my house!
What’s that? When I wake up in the morning, my fuel tank remains at the same level as the night before? That would mean that I may have to make my first stop of the day one of these filling stations. This might make me late, and certainly gives me some anxiety about the car’s range each and every day. Does the car have some app that tells you it’s fuel level, or whether you’ll be able to make it to your first and second destinations of the day without fueling?
I don’t like the idea that these fueling stations all have different prices. So now, I have to do the mental math and/or deal with the uncertainty of whether there is a better price two blocks away? While I do like the speed of refilling, I don’t understand how this is better than just getting a cheap refill while I sleep.
And how exactly do I move energy from my awesome solar-power array to this petrol car? Based on my knowledge of combustible fuel, that would be impossible, right? Can the ICE car industry provide some way of converting? Why don’t they have all the answers yet?
For all practical purposes, it makes sense to charge the battery pack during non-peak load times (eg. during the night) This allows the solar array to help generate peak load power and allows the battery to get power from the base load grid sources at night. If everyone prioritized charging their car duing the day with their solar panels, the energy companies would have to increase their peak production to meet demand (given no help from the solar sector) and in turn, burn fossil fuels to do so.
And out of curiousity, how big of a solar array do you think it takes to charge a 70 or 85kWh battery???
um…re-read that as if I am continuing the article’s review of a combustion vehicle.
I know exactly how much of a solar array it takes to charge an 85 Tesla, since I’ve owned both for over two years. But of course, I never actually use the electrons from the array to charge the battery, I arbitrage against the grid.
That is exactly how I read it. It was an absurd extension of an absurd article.
But besides that, I am really curious how big of an array you have. I find it humorous (and a little sad) how people buy a solar array and use it to justify buying wasteful things like a Telsa.
I’ve got 44 panels in a 12 KW DC array. I’d be pleased if you showed me how I wasted my money:
1) I had a $6,000/year electric bill prior to car and solar (awful, i know)
2) I switched to time of day electric pricing
3) I added a Tesla to my household
4) I added solar to my roof in sunny California
5) I’ve had a $350/year total electric bill since
Neglecting the fact that I no longer have to pay for, or stop for gasoline, I would still pay off my $30k solar investment in about 6-7 years. My $30k solar investment pays me dividends of $5,650 per year. That’s an 18.8% Internal Rate of Return. If I factor in gasoline savings, it will be sooner.
If I am sad, well then, I am sad with 0-60 mph bursts in 5 seconds all the way to the bank. Can’t wipe this sad smile off my face.
And as for the planet, you may create all sorts of myths about panel and battery damage, but those externalities occur just once, and the battery is likely to last beyond 8 years, and the panels over 20.
I have a solar array here in California too, but my numbers are no where near yours. I had a top tier installer at and paid $8 per watt for installation, but lets go with the average rate of about $5 per square foot. A 12kW system is approx 60k and even with the most aggressive government incentives, I cant see how you paid 30k for that. But sure, lets ignore your tax evasion (ive never heard of anyone getting that much back in taxes for having an array) and disregard the taxes you should be paying by using the roads that you don’t because you dont purchase fuel. It seems very selfish and unethical, but hey, I really doubt you care.
But lets get down to the point about the car. Is buying a 4,600 lb car that needs a very large battery pack replaced every 10 years practical? The internal discharge across the cells coupled with the energy you use driving daily equates to what? 20-50kWh per day? That is 20-50kWh of energy that doesnt hit the grid daily because you want to charge your impractical electric car. Don’t get me wrong, I cant wait for the day electric cars become predominant in society. Is that day today? No, hybrids are a lot more practical, less wasteful, and dont make you look like a pretentious idiot driving around in his tesla. So do us all a favor and stop believing that you are actually helping out the environment.
I do research in semiconductor devices (solar panels, transistors, etc.) It takes 10 kWh and 25 gallons of acid waste (dependent upon etching method) per cubic centimeter of semiconductor material in modern processing. (think about how many cubic centimeters of sc wafers are in that car or across your 12kWh array) I don’t create any myths about how environmentally damaging these processes are, I know how bad they are. And lithium ion batteries, we all know how bad those are to produce.
Sucks to be you. I must have gotten a much better deal. Check in with yourenergysolutions.com next time. 44 Mitsubishi panels installed, $40k, $10k rebate. It probably helped that I had a new barn with a low, single large southern exposure. Easy install helped me negotiate. But your $60k guess is way too high. Of three bids, nobody bid the job that high!
Also sucks to be me. A 1950s ranchette is not a very efficient building. I was burning $500/mo on electricity. But when most of your consumption is in the top pricing tier, solar has much better ROI.
I agree that we need to find a way to tax EVs for road use. That’ll come, and I’ll vote in favor. I also agree that I took the tax incentives to go solar. Who would not? I take all the legal tax breaks I can get, and then I pay up based on the rules as they are. And I’ll promise you this: my annual tax bill is more than a Tesla, so forgive me if I don’t feel like a “free rider”. In fact, the amount I pay in taxes is just enough to earn the right to respond to your quote “your tax evasion” with a hearty “fuck you!”
You wrote, “I cant wait for the day electric cars become predominant in society.” And you contribute to this how? By crapping on the early adopters? is it because the Tesla is a luxury car, and you resent the wealth? Sorry, but Musk knows the reality that there is more margin in luxury cars, so by taking advantage of our willingness to pay, he can start his little revolution. It’s not just wealthy people, either. It’s enthusiasts, and people who, unlike you, truly “can’t wait for the day”. So we don’t.
You want to talk a bunch of numbers about pollution with no citations, but that’s all BS. What you’re really here for is because you have a bad attitude. You seem to have a problem with any “pretentious idiot driving around in his tesla”.
I don’t know about your silicon wafer cred, but your ad hominem skills are finely honed. But personal attacks aren’t good arguments. They end them.
Bullshit. 10 kWh per cc would mean solar cells need MANY years to pay back the embodied energy. It’s less than 1 year anywhere sunny (for total energy not just cells). Your lab work is not analogous to large scale PV fabrication. 25 gallons of acid waste (spooky)? How much is acetic acid? How much can be neutralised with what’s left over from your alkali etch? What do you release to the drain? Right, salty water.
BTW the reason your solar system cost more was that you bought it in the past. Plenty of systems being advertised now for low $2/W.
That number is (I believe) provided by intel’s manufacturing process (can you say large scale). I can’t seem to locate the source of that number, but unless you can disprove it, I will not believe otherwise. And acetic acid? Maybe used in cleaning but not anything other than that (at least as much as I know of)… I am most familiar with RIF etching, but I believe wet etching most commonly uses ammonium fluoride and hydrofluoric acid. But other common manufacturing chemicals are arsine, phosphine, germane, silicane, and anhydrous ammonia… The waste from the processes is most definitely not “salty water”
By the way, the CSI General Market program data states that the current price per watt installed is $5.47. DOE sunshot program has it at $4.72 per watt. Even if you buy the cheapest Chinese panels, you cant get near $2 per watt.
It’s a very different process then. You should think of it as a big diode rather than specialty IC. With PV there is no ammonia/um, arsenic, or germanium. It’s a HF/HNO3/acetic etch, then NaOH texture for monocrystal. Phosphorus pentoxide is used rather than phosphine. Silane and HF is the dangerous stuff but manageable. Waste water is basically vinegar with sodium fluoride and silica. You shouldn’t discharge without treatment but it’s not arsenic.
Check out the silicon valley toxicity standards that the largest manufacturer all report under. Here’s Trina’s example: http://www.trinasolar.com/us/about-us/Sustainability.html The energy use is actually lower than I thought. They have a low margin, high volume product with silicon purity that IBM would consider as trash. They have to be super lean. Their silicon suppliers are the same, a lot of these factories supply only to PV which is the largest consumer of refined silicon.
As to the costs, I got a quote (in expensive Australia) for US$2.07/W six months ago. It was US$2.70/W without certificates. That includes tax. That’s also for a 3 kW system, it would have been cheaper per W for a larger system. The modules themselves are under $0.5/W now. That CSI data must be a year old or something weird is going on in Cali.
Nothing weird going on here, except Jens’ data.
As I wrote, I put in 12 Kw for $40k minus $10k from gov’ts. That was my price one year ago. Only unusual thing was that I had a very easy install. It’s all in one flat 22×2 grid on a single story 15 degree southern tilt roof.
Heh, the barn was not built that way by coincidence. I even chose the roof pitch to match optimal power generation. It gets no shade. I also had conduit and an electrical panel ready in just the right places. Doing all that may have saved me a $2-3k, and given me better power output, who knows.
For somebody that does research on semiconductor devices you sure don’t like to provide evidence. Just unanswered questions. Yes, there would need to be a large array of solar panels to charge your Tesla Model S. In Australia (where I live) most people get 2kW – 4kW systems to power their homes. The rough rule of thumb seems to be that a solar power system will generate ~4x the number of kWh as the kW rating of the system (http://www.solarcitizens.org.au/how_much_power_does_a_solar_panel_generate). This means that, those that own a 4kW solar system will generate about 15-20kWh of electricity per day.
Now, lets look at how much the average person travels (http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/australian-moterists-drive-average-15530km-201305090702). According to that article the average Australia travels 43km per day (rounding up). The Tesla Model S has a range of 426km. This means that the average person consumes 10% of the battery of their Tesla every day; certainly not a full tank as your logic suggests. This means that they will need to refill 8.5kWh of power per day which is only approximately half of the energy generated by a 4kWh system in Australia.
In short, your logic is pretty poor and the vast majority of people can easily use their solar panels (and some Tesla Powerwalls) to recharge your car every night.
And you can’t compare the creation of lithium ion batteries to the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. Provide some facts here and we can talk more.
I think you are all together not understanding a single point I am trying to make… so where to start
I was stating that the charging of the batteries not the creation of the batteries results in CO2 being released into the atmosphere. If you charge at night and dont have a battery storage system, you are most likely charging off electricity produced from fossil fuels. Do you want facts? Don’t be lazy, google it. I have done the research, so should you.
Next your assumption off 10% of the battery consumed assumes peak efficiency of the tesla (not realistic) and totally disregards the presence of internal discharge or leakage current in the system. So yeah, it is going to be easily 20%, but even then, that is 17kWh per day. So like all the energy you produced throughout the day is going into charging the car…
Dude common, can you not see the faults in your reasoning? Don’t believe what I am saying, then dont. I do not care to prove anything to you nor provide you with the knowledge you should be capable of obtaining on your own. I have to be honest, I laughed when you wrote and uneducated response and then had the audacity to criticize my logic. You know what they say though, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
“If you charge at night and dont have a battery storage system, you are most likely charging off electricity produced from fossil fuels.”
True in a night-only context. But I live in a 24 hour per day world, and suggest a more intelligent though process would include both night and day considerations.
During the daytime, I produce electricity exceeding my driving energy needs, which offsets fossil fuel burning at generation plants.
Net effect for me is emissions free driving and even more carbon offset.
Not necessarily, wind power operates overnight and is becoming more common all the time. If you are concerned about this, urge your local politicians to support wind. There’s a lot of emphasis on solar because it’s something individuals can do for themselves, but wind is at least as important for a renewable future.
Texas has so much wind power that they are giving electricity away overnight. Texas needs more electric cars to soak up all that overnight power.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/business/energy-environment/a-texas-utility-offers-a-nighttime-special-free-electricity.html?ref=topics&_r=0
Yeah Robert, I notice that the anti-EV crowd always act like EV owners use ALL the battery each day, but certainly don’t make that assumption when it comes to an ICE car. Bias is powerful.
Tesla owners don’t even charge their cars up to 100% each day. Tesla recommends we go only to 85% to prolong the life of the battery. My car reads about 240 miles of range each morning, and many days I park it at night with 220 miles still remaining. My solar array produces way more than my driving consumes.
How many decades ago did you buy your obsolete solar panels?
Prices have been dropping fast.
We do know how bad lithium ion batteries are to produce. They’re great! They’re one of the least toxic manufacturing processes I can think of. Concrete is worse. Asphalt is worse. Steel is worse.
I can’t believe people are still hung up on this and commenting. I’ve been closely tied to the PV market. I am well aware of the cost of solar panels as well as the statistical projections regarding their future pricing. But you are totally not even understanding the basis for my argument so whatever, I don’t care to spend the time to write a worthwhile reply. And I’m glad you know nothing about lithium ion battery manufacturing nor all the chemicals involved in the fabrication processes. But hey, thanks for the info about concrete, asphalt and steel. Would you like for me to also name three harmful, unrelated, manufacturing processes in an attempt to appear as if I have half a brain about what I am talking about? Screw this forum and all the clueless people on it. This will be the last comment I will make. I have better things to be doing with my time.
The battery pack will last long enough:
https://innovationorigins.com/correcting-misinformation-about-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-electric-vehicles-auke-hoekstras-response-to-damien-ernsts-calculations/
Sorry, but if you think you paid your investment in 6-7 years, you are not taking into consideration that you need to change your solar cells in 10-15 years.
No, the problem is that you clearly don’t understand the financial term “payback period”.
“Payback period in capital budgeting refers to the period of time required to recoup the funds expended in an investment, or to reach the break-even point.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_period
“How long the panels last” is unrelated to the payback period of 6-7 years, unless they break before 7 years. After 7 years, I have basically free energy until the panels cease producing.
Also, my entire system has a 20 year warranty from a small company called MITSUBISHI! My installer also warranties work for 20 years. That length of warranty is standard these days, since most panels last about 25 years.
http://sunbridgesolar.com/solar-energy-blog/how-long-do-solar-panels-really-last/
I’m not sure where you get your financial savvy or solar panel data, but you should research again.
Are you sure you aren’t thinking of the inverter? Those things do wear out in about ten years and need to be replaced. Solar cells and the panels containing them will often keep going for thirty years or more.
http://www.presse.uni-oldenburg.de/einblicke/54/files/assets/downloads/page0009.pdf
Since when? In Germany, there’s an array that’s coming up on 40 (forty!) years old:
http://www.presse.uni-oldenburg.de/einblicke/54/files/assets/downloads/page0009.pdf
I would just like to add… eventually when enough people have an electric vehicle… nightime charging will then be considered peak hours..
Well, that day may come. But then because of the ability to charge more or less whenever we want, there will be no peak hours.
A flat demand curve for electricity can make bot the distribution grid and power generation FAR more efficient. That means lower costs and less pollution for everyone.
I may lose my ability to arbitrage with my solar panels and Tesla, but a flat demand curve is good for everyone. Not such a bad outcome.
Excellent Write-up! Brings the future of the World Automotive Industry in sight today.
When electric cars become as cheap and as reliable as its gasoline counterparts ppl will switch.. until then electric cars are celebrity novelty
Your statement might have made sense a few years ago.
It still makes sense. ..Show me a price of any electric family sized car and show me the gasoline equivalent price. ..The electric is still thousands more…What are you talking about?
The difference is that the gasoline automobile is designed to suction away your money continuously, whereas the electric automobile does so to a far, far less extent.
And where does the electricity come from? the Electric car fairy?… Instead of gasoline your paying higher electric bills… I have friends who bought electric cars and they all love them… but it came at a higher cost to own… thats a fact
Your argument is ridiculous. Electricity is and will continue to be vastly cheaper than oil.
Right now I’m paying $5 for every 2,000 miles out of my electric motorcycle. From WIND ENERGY – from the mighty winds of New York.
You can take that $5 and enjoy your paltry 50 miles out of your oil-burner. The future is here, and it’s time to face the fact that you’re just dumping money into the money pit that is your gas car.
BWAAHAHAAHAAHAHA….. OMG im talking to a guy with an electric bike with a towing capacity of chinese food…neva mind….
You’re funny. (I think?)
There are free charging stations for electric cars. Where’s your god now?
I live in NYC please tell me more about all these free charging stations that Ive never seen before.. There is no such thing as free……free really means subsidized by a taxpayer somewhere.. and the cost is always much higher than it should be..
http://www.plugshare.com/
Also https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
Gasoline motorcycles have towing capacity?
Yes…. Chinese food
So how does that differ from an electric?
the future is still at least a decade away as it always has been..in 10 years we’ll still be saying its at least a decade away! we’ll get there slowly but by no means are we there already
It might make sense if the commenter hadn’t said “and as reliable”. They did though, and that’s ridiculous since electric cars have only a few moving parts and need hardly any maintenance compared to a gas-burning vehicle.
reliable meaning… whether it is 100 degrees or minus 20 degrees I still know how far I can go on a full tank of gas as opposed to a battery charge that acts very differently in extreme conditions…
You sir have a pretty closed mind.
1) you think that tesla doesnt build new superchargers? to think that is idiotic.
2) what? that’s just a suposition, as far as we both know, charging your car is FREE
Not closed.. realistic.. the Battery technology isnt perfected yet or cost effective to replace petrol…And proof of this fact is electric car sales….
Ok, keep spending thousands of dollars monthly in your old car, times will tell what’s the best way to go…
who the fuck spends thousands a month on a car? The times have already told whats the best way to go… gasoline vehicles arent going anywhere yet…Electric vehicles are gaining interest but unless costs come down buyers for them will represent a small niche of well meaning environmentalists who dont care about true cost to own..
Well, how much you spend a month on your car? It’ll be always greater than with an electric because the charge is free…
And about the price, they’re working on a 30000 usd vehicle, the model E
” It’ll be always greater than with an electric because the charge is free.”
I live in NY… NOTHING IS FREE! and even where u live,. Free really means someone else is paying for it..
That’s the best answer you have? “nothing is free”? A little more of elaboration would be nice…
Anyway, in that case, the atmosphere is the one who’s paying for your “great” petrol car (and also you paying for the fuel lol)
Let me say it again. …I Love in NYC…..Nothing is free here. ..What more elaboration do you need to understand this very clear statement? Secondly. ..What power company where you live is offering to give you FREE charging for your EV?..
“Nothing is free here” is just a vague assumption. You can’t debate if you make vague assumptions and are too lazy to back them up. The supercharger stations are free to use, as stated in the Tesla’s website. I don’t know which part didn’t you understand
“Nothing is free” isnt a vague assumption .. its reality that doesnt need a “Real Life for Dummies” explanation. “The supercharger stations are free to use”….Do u have a convenient free supercharger station at your home? Of course you dont.. so unless you plan on living at a roadway rest stop area your free charging theory is pretty much bullshit.. Secondly.. if you really believe that free complimentary charging stations dont carry a cost that is transferred back to the taxpayer youre a dumbass who lacks even basic economic knowledge.
Tesla Superchargers are paid for by Tesla owners when they purchase a new car. $2000 pays for a portion of building out new Superchargers in their area as well as the operational costs. Electricity is cheap and Supercharger stations are not manned, so they’re cheap to operate. Tax payers aren’t involved at all. It’s free enterprise at its best.
Where are all these free supercharging stations? Never seen one in NY… 2K couldnt get 10 ft of buried 3 inch conduit across a one lane street let alone a charging station.. who pays the rest? govt subsidies? aka the taxpayer?
A single Supercharger station with 10 stalls costs about $200,000 to install. For roughly every 200 cars sold in an area, Tesla can install another Supercharger station and run it for decades. Since most Model S owners charge up at home every night, Superchargers are only needed for occasional long distance travel and you don’t need one on every corner. No tax payer dollars are involved at all. For a map of locations, see http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
So basically my initial point is still valid. .. nothing is free and supercharging stations are a long way from being convenient and easily accessible to tesla owners in every state..Thanks for clearing that up
And just when you thought it would be cheaper to operate an electric vehicle here comes govt with a plan to make sure EV’s pay their fair share of the taxes normally charged with fuel purchases to repair roads..https://youtu.be/JiWkdL1Phb8
It still is way cheaper. We’ve been paying an extra EV road tax here in Washington state for several years now. It’s $100 a year. Meanwhile, I save about $1800 a year on fuel ($200 for electricity instead of $2000 for gas). I only drive about 8000 miles a year though, so most people will save even more.
these taxes always start out cheap…lets revisit in 5 or 10 years and see how cheap it still is..
I don’t understand how you can’t know that nothing is free. Where do you think the electricity comes from, maybe it is transported along the yellow brick road on the backs of unicorns? Just think of all those poor little underpaid (volunteer?) elves who generate the electricity too, all with no pay because electricity has to be totally free!
This is a pretty old comment, maybe a bit idealistic with respect to the economics of the whole thing. But my point still stands, the fact that the supercharger network is free for Tesla owners hasn’t changed yet, has it?
And I don’t know the exact numbers, but if I recall correctly charging the car overnight in your home is also cheaper than refueling a regular car. And if it’s not, electricity generation it’s an area that can and will improve in the future, meanwhile with petrol or diesel you’re more constrained by the whole system, you can’t just invent a new kind of fuel that is cheap as hell and every car can support it.
in time the best way to go will be the flying vehicles that use absolutly no energy to travel but unfortunatly like tesla electric cars theyre just not cost effective or better than the current option of desiel/ petrol cars
why not? You buy it and you use it for free, how can that not be better than petrol cars?
In the UK our fuel is more expensive than in the US but I don’t actually know anyone who spends more than £100-200 (the 200 being a month with a nice trip out somewhere or two extra) a month on fuel! That’s hardly thousands of dollars (or pounds) is it? Where are people getting these numbers? Most EV heads seem pretty bad at maths in the real world unless it’s about charging. Sorry but CO2 neutral liquid biofuels will be the way of the future, and people will still be able to run classic cars. EV’s are just for sad conformists.
Gas cars have shorter range in cold, snowy weather too.
It still makes sense. Used Tesla’s are $60,000. That’s 3-4x what most people pay to drive a used car…
Great delivery!
Elon brought me here! When you grow up around a crazy idea, you have no clue that it is crazy. Religions use this same method to stay in existence too.
Super nice and great to read!
A fantastic piece of writing and advertising. Well done!
Brilliant! I’ve always wanted to write an article written in an alternative universe where electric cars were “normal” and a new type of auto, a gasoline powered one, was just being introduced. I wish the author had gone into the complexity and absurdity of how gasoline is made, however. The drilling, numerous transportation methods, the refining, more transportation with huge truckloads of this flammable fuel on the public roadways, etc., etc, etc. Otherwise, a brilliant article!
well, lets talk about how your batteries are made, or from where your electricity comes from.
I’m not a douche-bag, I actually love Tesla, but sometimes, articles like this kind of piss me off.
I do love Tesla, I think it is a brilliant piece of engineering and I really hope this is the future, or at least the start of it.
I do think this article only showed the pros and not the cons of a Tesla,
That car, which couldn’t even produce 100hp is probably a very small engine car, so comparing the first five years of their life, even though you have to pump up expensive liquid in your petrol car every now and then, you will still end up saving money when comparing a 100.000euros Tesla to a 10-15000 euros car. And, as with any battery you will have to change it, how much is that going to cost in a Tesla?
If I’ll continue to live in Denmark, for sure in 3-4years I will buy a Tesla, because it is tax free, so the start prices for the P85D is similar to that of an BMW 5series, but it is still expensive for me at this point and for a lot of people.
Plus in a normal car you can choose from a lot of garages to repair it (or even yourself) with a lot of parts suppliers (OEM+aftermarket) with some cool upgraded parts. Tesla being a niche product, you are forced to buy the parts and repair it at them.
Also, those supercharges are way less popular than petrol stations. so for some people whom live in a flat and don’t have a charging station either in the vicinity or at work, its a nightmare to charge them, as they have to make regular trips to the supercharges, which although they are free, they take up to 30 minutes for a charge.
Also, the regenerative braking, isn’t that good. It does get some of the energy back but not a lot. I can see it much more useful from the brake wear point of view, since your brakes don’t need to be used as often
“well, lets talk about how your batteries are made, or from where your electricity comes from”
Well, lets talk about how petrol is made and where it comes from.
I haven’t ever mentioned that petrol is clean. no where near that. I just had a problem with people always pushing that electric cars are clean and petrol cars are dirty.
Also, most of the electricity in the grid comes from non-renewable, polluting source.
As a power system engineer I can honestly tell you that although wind and solar are a good think, at the moment, for every kW they can generate it requires another kW of non-renewable to be available, since this renewable sources are not very predictable and sometimes their peak generation does not actually happen at the same time as peak consumption.
we still have a long way to go, and at least form my point of view we are on the most suitable track, but its going to take some time to see if this is actually viable (in the 40s and 50s they were dreaming of nuclear batteries in watches and cars and any other item).
My main objection was to the way they presented the Tesla, as the only and best solution. Even your comment proved me right, as you haven’t said batteries are clean, you just said petrol is also dirty.
Where the electricity comes from? If you’re talking about Tesla, it’s apparently renewables: http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-supercharger-network-drive-free-forever-sunlight.html
As for the batteries, there are plenty of studies that show that batteries are a tiny proportion of the environmental impact of an electric car, barely relevant next to the impact of producing a new car of any type in the first place, which in turn is minor in comparison to the environmental impacts of energy production. Yes, Most grid power still comes from coal and gas, but the people behind Tesla are doing more than anyone to change that – from offering homeowners their own solar solutions at cheaper-than-grid prices through SolarCity, to the recent unveiling of the Tesla Energy home and grid batteries that will enable renewable to take the place of polluting power sources even on the grid..
I realize and respect where you are coming from, but in the “alterternative universe” that I was speaking of, where electric cars were the normal and gasoline cars were just being introduced, we would have had 100 years to refine battery manufacturing and power production to make it cleaner so it would undoubtably be much cleaner and effecient than in our real universe. Gasoline production would also have been just going from small production to massive production for these “new type of vehicles” and would have been far dirtier than it is in our universe. As I said in my original post, it would have been a fantasy article much as this one was, only taken a step or two farther.
No production of any energy can be totally clean. There is pollution produced in making wind turbine parts, or hydroelectic parts and construction and even solar panels for example, but it is still far less enviromentally disruptive than drilling into the earth for finite resources, transporting it with ships or trucks that run on oil, refining it, etc. Piplines are prone to leaks and ruptures too. Find some maps and diagrams of the piplines in the Gulf of Mexico sometime to see what I mean.
Yes, electric cars are much cleaner than fossile fuel cars! 🙂
https://innovationorigins.com/correcting-misinformation-about-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-electric-vehicles-auke-hoekstras-response-to-damien-ernsts-calculations/
“well, lets talk about how your batteries are made, or from where your electricity comes from.”
Apparently, the author is in Sweden.
“Sweden consumes a substantial amount of electricity per capita (15,000 kWh per person/year). Few countries consume more energy, yet Swedish carbon emissions are low compared with those of other countries. The average Swede releases 5.1 tons of carbon dioxide per year into the atmosphere, compared with the EU average of 7.9 tons and the US average of 19.1 tons.
The reason for this low emission rate is that about 78 per cent of electricity in Sweden comes from nuclear power and hydroelectric power, neither of which generates carbon emissions.”
https://sweden.se/society/energy-use-in-sweden/
hehe funny story
and so true… can’t wait for my Tesla…
This makes me happy. LOL
Brilliant
Genius!
This is so hilarious, love it, and sharing it with friends and family!! If you want a few more laughs poking fun at ICE check out our website, we hope you enjoy it! Cheers from California, USA
Yes now next time try together with some 200.000 dutchees all go skiing in the same week that all the kids have a holiday. So as soon as the kids are out of school and we’ve packed, all of us migrate to the mountains. A 1000km trip. Nice trip, but all along the way all gas stations have a 1 hour wait time because of all the people are filling up their gas guzzling oldsmobiles.
We should take different roads? We already do, there are 5 parallel highways (mostly triple lane) we use. There are hundreds of gas stations but all have waiting times even though we only have to fill up once (taking 2-3 minutes) during our trip (or maybe twice if you want to avoid peak hour in filling up all at the same hour in the middle of the night).
Now we should probably go all buy an electric car. Problem is we all have to use practically the same 1 or 2 routes with the 5 superchargers along the route we need to recharge at all at once. We need to recharge for 30 minutes for 5 times during the trip! o.o…. I don’t like the waiting times on that trip!
“Now we should probably go all buy an electric car.”
Any argument that stars with “everything changes overnight” is worthless.
I didn’t say overnight right? Even after a hundred years of petrol cars you have to wait an hour before you can refill your gasoline car during the holiday migrations. That sucks. But I don’t see how electric cars are going to change that in a hundred years even if battery tech will improve. Faster charging and more kwH/mass or volume packs means enormous amounts of more power to charge them. Even with batteryswaps that is not gonna work, because the recharging of the swapped battery takes to long before it can be reused. You’d need a 10-fold of batteries then cars to be able to keep swapping batteries.
“I didn’t say overnight right?”
You did implied that.
Yeah, but your group might be happier if they get to hop out for more than 2 minutes during the trip.
You can’t take a break if the cars waiting in line for the gas station exit are so numerous that you are on the emergency lane 1KM in front of the gas station.
And its mostly at night, except for the driver they are mostly sleeping. And trust me if you got kids you’d want to keep them sleeping as long as possible, you’d rather swap the driver quickly and get a move on then go sightseeing for an hour or two every 2 hours.
Contrary to most who read this article, I took away a much different message. This was a shameless attempt to belittle the “poor fellow commuters” who have not had the “opportunity” to purchase a tesla or another electric car for that matter. What this article failed to recognize is how wasteful buying one of these cars is.
Prius electric battery – 4.4kWh
Tesla S electric battery – 70/85kWh
The tesla’s smallest model of the model S has a 16 times larger battery than the prius. Does each car get from point A to point B? Yes and except on the Autoban, both will just as fast. You could argue that the prius has a gas motor and sure, I am really intrigued to hear your argument of how an engine is more wasteful than an additional 65.6kWh battery capacity.
In the end, the Tesla is a very wasteful vehicle and those who do not see it as such are highly uneducated on the matter. But feel free to reply, I don’t mind shedding light on this issue.
Your argument would be better made talking about the volt, c-max energi, Volvo T8, or Mercedes plug-in hybrid systems as they can actually provide 18-50miles of range. Enough for a one-way commute or trip to the shops. The anemic prius really doesn’t do much that a 1.0L econobox couldn’t already do.
I do not support plug in hybrids. They are less efficient and more wasteful than hybrids, but just not as bad as full scale electrics.
So true, all of it … now if only my leaf had the range of a tesla …
I really like the idea of an electric car like the Tesla, but how well does it work in northern cold climates like where I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada?
The average winter temperature here in January is about -20 Celcius and can get as low as -40 Celcius some days (a bit rare, but does happen every few years; however -30 Celcius does happen a few days every winter).
Batteries are known to be terrible in very cold temperatures and drain their power very quickly.
Also, a lot of energy would be used to heat the passenger compartment. At least that’s one good use of the excess heat generated from an internal combustion engine.
Any real-world experience running these cars throughout a full year (or several) in cold climates?
Thanks.
The Tesla Model S will preheat the cabin and battery when you are plugged into power at home or work. Better still would be to park in a slightly conditioned garage, I’m not sure how common that is in Manitoba, as this will let the car use less energy keeping everything warm.
Very interesting; thanks for that Andrew.
Garages here are not really conditioned, as such, but a lot of people have insulated garages that are attached to the house (like me), so the garage stays warmer than the outside in the winter as it gets some heat loss from the house on the adjoining wall and of course it is sheltered from the wind/snow/rain, etc…
Typically, during the winter, the temperature in the garage will be about 10 Celcius warmer than the outside. In the summer, the garage is usually a few degrees cooler than the outside as well.
So, charging overnight in the garage at home shouldn’t be a problem. The problem is leaving it outside at work for 8 hours. During the coldest winter days (usually the guideline is at -20 Celcius or colder) to plug in the block heater to the electric post.
Most companies provide power to these posts only during the winter months and only on a cycling basis (typically about 1 hour charging and then 0.5 hours off, or something like that to conserve power).
I don’t know if that would be enough to keep the batteries functioning and able to start and drive the car at -30 Celcius or worse and the extra resistance of driving through heavy snowfall, spinning on ice, etc…
Winter is a killer on electric cars…
Considering the fact that Tesla sells really well in Norway, I would say harsh winter weather is not an issue. Check out Bjørn Nyland on YouTube.
But yes, cars do have radically reduced ranges in harsh climates. It’s not an EV specific issue though, the limited inherent range is.
Tesla cars run their heater to keep the battery above freezing, warm enough to run the car, at all times. So you end up using extra energy for the heater, just like a block heater. This reduces the car’s range, obviously. But the car functions just fine. If you can plug into the electric post, that will help with the range, again obviously. The Tesla can handle it if the power is coming on and off.
There is someone who lives above the arctic circle in Nunavut who owns at least 10.
Wow, really? Nunavut is a lot further north than where I am and it is colder much longer than my home city. I’d like to read about how they run those cars there.
Not so bad. People in cold climates plug in the block-heaters anyway or the gas car won’t start in the morning. On the Tesla cabin-heating and defrosting in the morning, there is an App for That. Using your phone you turn on the heater (or air conditioner if it’s hot out) before you go down to the car. As the car is plugged in it costs very little to use grid power to heat and defrost it. (Or cool it.) And your batttery remains full.
Now the Tesla has a water cooled motor and battery and inverter. There isn’t as much waste heat as an ICE but plenty it turns out to heat the passenger cabin most of the time.
You do get 20% reduced range from Lithium in cold climates, but range is pretty good. I use 100 miles most days out of my 250. I only charge to 200 in fact, to extend the life of the battery, and make sure I have robust regenerative braking which I love. (If you charge it up 100% the regen braking gets disabled.)
Pretty good parody of typical “test drive of electric car” article. Only problem is comparing pricey Tesla with cheapo gasoline car. It isn’t completely apples to apples.
After reading this, I would want to be driving a Tesla… if it were priced anywhere near affordable. Tesla continues to advocate electric tech and environmental friendliness. However, theirs is an exclusive club where the top 1% (or 5% or whatever that ratio is) – who can afford to buy their cars – can only “save the environment” (not to mention they probably have a fleet of Ferrari’s or Lambo’s in their garage. i.e.Di Caprio is advocate to Tesla…but he does drive a petrol drinking 3.6l V6 Porsche Cayenne as well!). Most Tesla drivers don’t buy a Tesla because care about the environment, but because they want to show they can afford a really expensive car. Hope to see Tesla one day make their cars affordable to the remaining 99% (or 95%) whom continue to strut around in their inept petrol cars.
P.S. Sarcasm aside, the writing of this article is clear representation to the status quo and ignorance of Tesla drivers / environmentalist as it is written as if petrol cars are alien to them so as to separate them from the rest of society (i.e. Exclusive Club). I’m sure you went to school in a 3,000,000 liter school bus, or taken a petrol laden taxi, or your caretakers drive one. So don’t write as if you don’t know how it feels to be in one.
Exellent! Funny & true!
Pretty awesome write up ! loved it !
This is funny. But it is religiously blind. In Germany, 50% of electricity comes from coal. E-cars are coal cars, nuclear cars, etc. Unreliable energy (solar, wind)=not helpful.
So are people that buy gas and diesel blind. They are oblivious to the fact that enormous amounts of electricity are used to convert oil into gasoline and diesel. So your gas car is a coal burning car even more than an electric car. You have just chosen to ignore that fact.
Almost 90% of all the energy we use is from fossils. On a global scale 70% of electricity is generated by fossil fueled power plants. Not the other way around. The energy needed to obtain the 1000+° Celsius for production of steel, cement, glass aso. is from fossil fuels. Fertlizer is produced out of methane. All this could be known. Eco-religious belief blinds people.
The point you chose to ignore is that gasoline and diesel uses lots of electricity. Industrialization has been powered by fossil fuels but that doesn’t mean the future needs to be powered by them. Just like we used to burn lots of wood to keep ourselves warm. Things change and we as a species have learned there are alternatives to burning things. We can grow up and advance ourselves, which has nothing to do with religion, or we can keep acting like children and being selfish. It not religion, but math. 7 billion people on one planet and continuously burning stuff to power everything means you will eventually run out of things to burn. We already know of lots of ways to create power. We just need to start doing them. Selfishness and short sightedness is equally blinding.
Your world is topsy turvy. In REALITY, electricity (and the production of steel, and cement, and glass, and heating, and cooling, and production of fertilizers, and plastics, and on and on) uses lots of fossil fuels, not the other way around. The future in which less and less of fossils will be needed is one with a energy cheaper, denser, cleaner and more reliable than fossils, which means nuclear, definitely not solar and wind, which are unreliable and thin(=expensive). Unreliable electricity is almost as bad as none at all.
You don’t have a clue who I am, so give up trying to categorize me. I am all for nuclear power plants. Modern versions, not the outdated kinds we currently use from the 1950’s. A well balanced combination of nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro with battery storage to balance the whole energy grid would work the best. Oil should be reserved for uses other than being burnt in engines for many of the items you listed.
I stand by my point that we need to move beyond the wasteful burning of fossil fuels. It won’t be a fast changeover but it needs to start happening. We just have to have the will to do it. I am also aware that the new ways of gathering and storing energy will not be “green” or perfectly sustainable. I am looking for improvements and ways that will, in the long run, be sustainable with the ability to expand as needed.
What do you need wind and solar for? Burning money and disfiguring the countryside? Intermittent power source=bad for the grid. Full stop.
Only that they work and are sustainable. I agree that they are much more intermittent, however a solid energy storage system would smooth that out while protecting against possible failures. I prefer a well balanced grid to one relying on one type of energy generation. That allows for monopoly possibilities that I would prefer to avoid.
Thanks for the discussion, bungle. We may disagree on points but I prefer a discussion with some disagreement to no discussion at all.
Some people would have us believe that we are smart enough to store nuclear waste for 100,000 years but too dumb to store energy overnight.
Nuclear “waste” is the nuclear fuel for the next generation of fast reactors which are being built at the moment. Whats left by them will be harmless after 200 to 300 years.
We are not “too dumb to store energy”, we simply can’t afford to store the amounts we need constantly, storing energy (which means converting it, times 2, which means even more energy lost, of power sources already thin to begin with) is many times more expensive than producing the right amount just in time, which wind and solar aren’t capable of. Wind and solar are thin, and unreliable. Everything an energy source of the future simply cannot be. I am repeating myself. It’s simple physics. But I get it, you are not willing to get your head around the facts.
Wow, a nuclear shill. Nuclear waste is waste and nobody has any idea what to do with it. Strontium-90, Technetium, Americium, Neptunium, etc. etc. etc.
If with “nobody has any idea” you mean yourself, you are right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
I love innovation and i am not against evolution, but read these articles and put them in perspectives…
http://www.forbes.com/…/teslas-gotcha-blog-catches-new…/
http://www.slate.com/…/how_green_is_a_tesla_electric…
http://www.forbes.com/…/are-electric-cars-really-that…/
The electric wonderland is maybe not as promising as the TESLA article.
Also, if the electric concept is as exceptional than that, why an electric car still as expensive when we buy it…
Your argument is not found. Please try again.
there are not one, but many arguments.
Electric is not produced magically.
I love innovation, but this is not the all in one solution as the article may sound.
(but being in a TESLA club forum, i am not expecting much support ;-). By the way, TESLA produces very beautiful and innovation cars)
What he meant is that all of your links give a response of “page not found”.
Driving a gasoline car is like watching a black and white television.
Don’t be mistaken. Most of people watch a black and white television not by choice, but because they can’t afford buying a color TV. Don’t laugh at them.
Exactly, you should not laugh at people that can’t afford a EV.
Who does?
You have it backwards. Tesla is a black and white TV. My car out-accelerates the Tesla, has much better fit and finish (and materials), makes an enjoyable exhaust-note, and handles better. I do think EV autos have a great future, but I will wait for Audi, Porsche, M-B or BMW to make one. Tesla’s are going straight to Tier 2 status in 1-2 years. I don’t think there’s any question about it.
I’ve shopped many cars at the luxury level and I can assure the author his experience sounds very 1980s to me. Sure, there are exceptions, but dealers make more money delivering a better experience.
Go on then, what car have you got?
Well, according to this there is only one of 13 cars that he could possibly own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_cars_by_acceleration
I think our friend here is in the minority. And if Tesla 2 going to “Tier 2” status means that they are cheaper and can be adopted by the wider public: GREAT! That is exactly the plan!
Though I think that Merckel should realise that Tesla is just getting started. Maximum Plaid is coming soon. Put it this way, it took petrol cars ~100 years to get to 2.2s to 97kph. Tesla has achieved 2.8s to 97kph in ~12 years. This is just the beginning.
I don’t honestly think someone who owns and drives a million dollar car is dense enough to criticise on an amazingly written article and a car that revolutionized the way people look at electric cars. You sir, are either an impostor or a troll. Or a soccer player, but you seem to be able to read and write so that may be far-fetched.
After reading this, I would want to be driving a Tesla… if it
were priced anywhere near affordable. Tesla continues to advocate electric tech
and environmental friendliness. However, theirs is an exclusive club where the
top 1% (or 5% or whatever that ratio is) – who can afford to buy their cars –
can only “save the environment” (not to mention they probably have a
fleet of Ferrari’s or Lambo’s in their garage. i.e.Di Caprio is advocate to
Tesla…but he does drive a petrol drinking 3.6l V6 Porsche Cayenne as well!).
Most Tesla drivers don’t buy a Tesla because care about the environment, but
because they want to show they can afford a really expensive car. Hope to see
Tesla one day make their cars affordable to the remaining 99% (or 95%) whom
continue to strut around in their inept petrol cars.
P.S.
Sarcasm aside, the writing of this article is clear representation to the
status quo and ignorance of Tesla drivers / environmentalist as it is written
as if petrol cars are alien to them so as to separate them from the rest of
society (i.e. Exclusive Club). I’m sure you went to school in a 3,000,000 liter
school bus, or taken a petrol laden taxi, or your caretakers drive one. So
don’t write as if you don’t know how it feels to be in a petrol car.
I agree with your point that electric vehicles are not yet affordable for most of us. However, I take the article slightly differently. They’re saying: what if electric were the norm, and combustible were an alternative? We’d likely never go for combustible engine vehicles–due to their innumerable downsides–if renewable energy vehicles were affordable and prevalent. That will be clear in the next 20 years as consumer gasoline-powered cars fade.
Tesla is collecting 20%+ gross profit margins on each car sold. They do this in order to raise money to fund expansion. If necessary — or once they’re done expanding — they can cut the price.
Very nice. We should all get so accustomed to electric driving…
Sounds like a Chevy. Next time try a Ford.
Your heart vibrates and makes noise, keeps beating while you stay or sleep. True there’s pollution but batteries have no energy to power heavy trucks that carry and work for your pretentious electric sloooow cars.
Haha, love it, great piece of reverse satire, and so true.
“…braking gives no regeneration of gasoline back into the tank!”
Bwahaha! This reminds me of the story of the sacred rac:
http://www.drabruzzi.com/sacred_rac.html
Funny article. Though I have to say I have access to both a Model S P85 and a Tesla Roadster S.
The Roadsters build quality is atrocious. It squeaks and rattles after just 20.000km on its odometer like no car I’ve seen before. The Tesla team has visited several times to fix “something” on the car, once changing the whole suspension (after about 5000km). You had to install special charging stations for those, the range dropped quickly when driving fast – you knew that they were just the first evolutionary step.
Now the Model S – that is a different beast. The build quality still is nowhere near the quality of equally priced petrol cars, but remember that it is built in smaller numbers – mass production drives down costs for single parts, and the most expensive thing about the Tesla still is the battery. The jump from the Roadster to the Model S is noticeable though, very noticeable indeed!
As for the rest: Well, range is still a huge issue. When you need to make a business trip and you can’t go by plane or train (because the destination is unreachable by both) you cannot beat a simple Diesel. Sadly the Supercharger infrastructure isn’t as great here in Germany as it is in other places, also they are sometimes out of order or there are no free places. Yes, with the rising number of Teslas you can arrive just to find out that all loading spots are taken and you have to wait an hour or so to fill up. On a normal trip.
Normally the train would be the fastest option (if you can reach your destination that way), but the train conductors are on strike again…
I personally think that Teslas are the way to go for city traffic and commuting. Also for Taxis.
But for personal fun nothing beats the sound of a sporty engine and a good manual transmission. Give me a lightweight MX5, Lotus Exige or an old Audi Coupe with Torsen Quattro drive and an i5-engine in it anytime – that feeling, that driving sensation can’t be beat by an electric car (yet).
Even the Roadster feels like you are sitting in an Autoscooter. On/off. Bzzt. Technically amazing, but… soulless somehow.
And Tesla: If you guys are reading, ditch that damn touchscreen. Give me buttons that I can use with my gloves on when I come in from the cold when I have to park the car on an outside parking lot. Take a cue from old Volvos, all of their buttons and switches were easy to operate with gloves on (I think it was a requirement actually).
You, sir, are my Hero.
Waaaay too long, for a joke.
I also am here from Elon’s tweet 04May2015. Funny, and great points! As Elon said once, something to the effect of “No one now would ever design a gas car, when there are electrics.”
I would add one huge advantage of EVs: roughly 3 to 4 times better tank/battery-to-wheel conversion efficiency:
“The engine was also extremely hot, we burned ourselves when we touched it.” I would add something like:
“all this heat is the leftover energy in the gasoline explosions that cannot be used for propulsion. It turns out 65 to 75 percent of the energy in the gasoline is wasted this way. This is about one-third the efficiency of normal electric cars.”
“horrified that the gasoline engine continued to burn these expensive gasoline drops even when the car was standing still…cost anxiety – the feeling that the car literally burns up your money”
Good point vs. “range anxiety!”
maybe the problem of the relentless and irritating noise will be solved at next upgrade. How often are upgrades released for the ICE model you rode? Do you get it at home or at the charging station?
So did you say this tech. was called “Internal Combustion Engine”? very strange arrangement.. I for one will not be buying a car like that! Some sort of madness!
Very well written!
I’m guessing a gasoline car review from 2015 would be similar to this writeup. HaHa!
Excellent!! I have translated it into Spanish in my fb but don’t know how to share it with you. Does anybody help me?
You forgot something important.
The fuel engine isn’t attached directly to the wheels, because it has a problem. It has zero torque at zero RPM. So there is no way for a gasoline engine to start a car moving, because the moment you attach the wheels to the sub-100 horsepower engine, the engine will stop and the electric motor will have to be called in to service to restart it.
There is a device called a clutch that allows most of the energy of the engine to be wasted as friction, but allows the connection with the wheels to be be made gradually, so the weak torque limit of the engine is not exceeded. That way you can usually sort-of get the car moving before the engine gets stopped. Once the car and engine are both moving at a speed where the “gears” can connect them, the clutch is no longer needed, however it is quite heavy and it is just another thing to drag around with you.
Training on the clutch is quite difficult so many people don’t bother, opting for a hydraulic “torque converter” instead, which is even heavier and which wastes energy and reduces horsepower all the time.
Nothing though on the vastly superior range of gasoline powered cars, and how much cheaper they are than EVs.
It would have been great to say ” Can I turn the car on and warm it up in my garage? What do you mean I can’t run the car in my garage to get it ready? The exhaust fumes are literally poison and would kill me? How is that safe?”
here is my translation of this awesome piece of writing on a Turkish Tesla fan site;
http://teslaturk.com/benzinli-test-surusu/
I’d be happy if you could add this to the list. Take only the text between horizontal bars though, the black text.
Great! Add a link to this page to your text and we will add it to our list.
I already have. It is under “Kaynak” which means source in Turkish.
Sorry, my bad 😉 added!
Awsome story! Congratulations to the author! Wonderful! I laughed a lot :))))
Your Rafael de Mestre , the around the world in a Tesla Roadster EV world record holder (www.80edays.com)
You are my hero.
I did translate in French this very good text. Le texte a été traduit en Français. Voici l’URL pour le lire dans la langue de Molière: http://roulezelectrique.com/lessai-dune-voiture-a-essence/
Great! Added to the list.
and after driving the Petrol car you realised you have a vagina between your legs and your late has the wrong froth texture
This is a very self serving piece to promote Tesla. I can appreciate that it is somewhat humorous but I think it overlooks a lot of important things. I won’t comment on the obvious such as the limitations of an electric vehicle. That said I think the Chevy Volt is superior to Tesla. Unfortunately the boring guys in Michigan do not have Musks’s talent for self promotion. Sure the Tesla looks good and body parts appear to fit well. I own a number of cars with combustion engines. Those that cost $60,000.00 and up certainly don’t rattle. In fact my 2014 Chevy SS 2014 retails for approximately $45,000.00 and is smooth as silk. Rear drive with an LS3 V8 and wonderful to drive. Sure it consumes fuel but you only live once. Tomorrow I will be on my way to the local road racing course to drive my 700 HP Corvette. This one rattles and smells but is a bundle of fun. All I have to do is to put gas in the tank after each session. At $2.60 per US gallon it is a steal!
Now lets’s look at the Tesla. Massively serialized batteries with a number of paralled strings. All connected to achieve an extremely high DC bus voltage to save on expensive IGBT modules. The electrons that the writer refers to must travel trrough batteries and IGBTs to power the electric motors that power the drive train of a Tesla. You mean to tell me that batteries or transistors never fail? FYI I design, manufacture power converters used in various power conversion devices so I know a little bit about electrical engineering. Feel free to point out how Tesla manages bad battery cells, overcurrents and other nasty little things that can happen.
I do believe that German automotive manufacturers are on the right track when they combine combustion and electric drive systems. Porsche is showing us the way. Ultimately fuel cells such as Toyota is betting on will probably carve out a large part of the market for boring utility vehicles. Toyota knows a thing or two about power conversion after putting 6 M+ Prius on roads worldwide.
At the end of the day when the hype settles Tesla will be another footnote in automotive history–sort of like Preston Tucker’s creation. Self promotion is an American game that we are very good at. Elon surely absorbed all this very quickly after arriving on these shores.
Your lengthy diatribe just doesn’t take into account that you are ascribing the very thing you accuse the author of doing, being self serving. Sure you like the rumble and sound of your ICE and enjoy a day at the track in your multiple cars. There is nothing wrong with that except for the waste generated from burning all those fossil fuels. I’ll ignore that since you are doing exactly what everyone else, including myself, has done for the last 100 years.
Fuel cells sound nice on paper but I have yet to see a car that offers reasonable price and convenience to beat a gas car, let alone an electric. Where is the advantage to a consumer?
For now a Tesla, or any electric car, lacks the ability that you consider important: a fun day at the track. But that is coming. Within ten years you will see an electric track car that will put your Corvette to shame. It is already beating it at the drag strip. The difference is that the Tesla is also a lot of fun and comfortable in everyday driving. It’s not so good on the track however.
Brilliant. Well done. I was very entertained.
Really, why were you entertained?
Because it was very good satire.
Loved the article. Funny thing is that most probably this “alien” test-driving the ICE vehicle (better to consider an alien than an alternate universe, in my opinion) would go and dig into his civilization’s past and find out (surprise surprise) that thousands of years ago his civilization used fossil fuels to power their vehicles until they started mass-producing sustainable, affordable EVs. We’ll get into a world where EVs will be the norm, we just need to develop and be willing to provide this tech to the whole world at an affordable price (a Tesla and even solar panels are not an option for 90% of the world: we’re 7 billion, with population increasing faster in developing countries with broken economies, remember that). Don’t shit on the ICEs, they got us into a position to dream of a fully EV world.
Retarded piece.
If you can´t figured out how the gears works you shouldn´t get you drivers licence in a first place. It´s very nice that you can save 10€ per 100km in fuel, that´s totally gonna compensate that 80 200€ which Tesla S cost. Even tho I do muss less than 12€ in petrol car.
And you know what?
I’ve heard that these engines sometimes are used to produce electricity that could be stored otherwise cleanly in a battery and produced for free!
How can this be! Why would you by expensive fossil fuel to generate electricity than can be made anywhere for no cost and then stored for later usage!
Why do these people keep acting like idiots?
Loved it.
Well written paper, very funny, but so naive and full of trolls.
As soon as electric cars can drive 800 km with a single charge and cost the same price as a petrol car, all these arguments will be useless.
It’s all about price and conveniency in the end.
“It’s all about price and conveniency in the end.”
That is true. Though you then set an arbitrary amount of 800 km on a single charge and with the identical cost of a gas car. I think consumers will know what works best for them and will then decide for themselves.
Awesome – Well written and very funny! Thanks for this, it gave me a nice smile with my morning coffee.
Ha electricity? How old fashioned i just use my flying car with the Mr. Fusion 😉
Great article, love the satire and the new invemtion perspective on ICE driven vehicles. Just 2 questions…
How is the electricty for you car generated?
How is it done for free?
Thank you 🙂
Well, in Sweden it is hydro power. But even if a coal plant is used it produces less CO2 as petrol cars because electric motors are more efficient so less power is needed to move the car.
The electricity is of course not free. About $2,000 of each sold Tesla is for prepayment of the electricity I will use at Superchargers. And when I charge at home I do pay for the electricity – about $2/100km.
You’re lucky to have the geography and sense to build hydro-power in Sweden. In the UK most electric vehicles are charged overnight and a that point the grid base load is provided by 3/4 coal – 1/4 nuclear. I sat down with the Environment Specialist at my job and even he agreed that the company’s Nissan Leaf was more polluting than my LPG-powered Impreza. We worked out it’s CO2 emission to be ~ 200g/km.
Yes the electric motor is more efficient, but there are transmission losses in the grid and when the gasoline tank is empy it weighs nothing; the Tesla battery has the same mass charged and empty.
What proportion of the mass of the Tesla is battery?
Your environmental specialist needs to go back to school if he can’t do the basic equations. It is easy to spin the numbers by simply ignoring critical points. For example, is he even counting the CO2 used to get the LPG and transport it? Or is he just counting the burned LPG emissions? If you follow the energy trail from beginning to end then an EV is easily one of the cleanest transportation.
Did you take into account that a coal burning plant (3/4 of your night power) will still be “on” whether you pull any electricity or not? There is a lot of electricity at night that is simply lost because a coal burning power plant cannot just shut off. So the energy pulled during that time is excess wasted energy anyway. In the larger picture the CO2 is really 0 amount of additional electricity.
An electric car is not perfectly clean. Nothing industrial is. However is has the possibility of being much more clean than anything else out there. The advantage is that you don’t need to give anything you like to do up just to go green. It can be sustainable.
Har har. Perhaps the Tesla drivers should have taken a trip past the nuclear power plants on their way home that supply nearly 40% of Sweden’s electricity. Just imagine the power demands if all those “poor fellow commuters” invest in Teslas. Either cover the landscape windmills (think of Denmark), or dam a few more rivers perhaps, or have the coastline despoiled with tidal power generators, maybe build a few coal fired power plants as they’re so cheap or how about a few new nuclear power plants? As no one will be paying gasoline taxes the funds to maintain the roads and government services will have to come from somewhere else such as new and very high road use charges. Interesting times ahead. After all even with electric cars there is no free lunch. Being one of the few whose company has bought you a Tesla or you’re able to carry enough debt to buy one (or more probably lease one) is almost cool. Standing in line for the supercharger won’t be.
In Washington state and a few others, owners of EVs pay a $100 annual road tax with their registration renewal to make up for the lost gasoline tax revenue. This is an easily solved problem.
Of course you’d have to account for the massive difference between American and Swedish gas taxes. In the EU the gasoline taxes are extraordinarily high (which is part of the reason why it costs so much to fill up the tank in the story. As of this writing, gas prices in Sweden are about EUR 1.52/L. By contrast in Seattle the average gas prices is about USD 3.13/gallon, or EUR 0.75/L. Almost all of that difference is due to gas taxes (EUR 0.18/L in Washington state vs EUR 0.90/L in Sweden). So to transplant Washington’s USD 100 road tax, Sweden would need to charge a EUR 455 road tax.
Of course much of Sweden’s tax is carbon pricing, so the whole point would be to not charge this amount to electric car owners. But if you did have a wholesale switch that would presumably leave Sweden with a quite large budgetary hole to fill.
Governments will always figure out ways to tax their citizenry. The hole would be filled by something.
This is an excellent piece and right on mark. I hope some TV shows or movie picks up this as a piece, which will really send the message home. Other option will be to develop an advertisement around the theme in a futuristic setting. I am waiting for the days “fossil fuel free state” or “car with tailpipes not allowed” slogans. I wrote a basic piece along the same lines. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/telsas-powerwall-10-megatrends-check-them-out-sohail-hasnie
This of course omits the fact that the battery power needed to propel an EV has been around for only a short time. The modern world was built with fossil fuels. It’s it time for a change? That’s the current discussion its true. Maybe in 150 years lithium will be destroying the planet…
The modern world is also being destroyed by fossil fuels. We should be so lucky to experience this problem in 150 years, if we can make it that long.
Lithium is #3 on the periodic table. It is common and not particularly toxic. Unless you consider sand toxic.
This is not the first time round for electric vehicles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#First_practical_electric_cars are we smarter now ?
A few things have been invented since then – like the itegrated circuit, transisters, diodes, microprocessors, and lithium ion batteries – that make modern electric cars 100x better. We had telephones a 100 years ago, too, but you’d be ridiculous to compare a modern smartphone to one.
Several major changes:
(1) Gasoline is much more expensive than it was then. Gasoline was very very cheap from the 1890s through the 1950s. We ran out of cheap oil in the 1970s. Gasoline has been much more expensive since the 1980s.
(2) Electricity is much cheaper than it was then. I have a graph about that somewhere…
(3) Electricity wasn’t even AVAILABLE everywhere in the 1910s. In the US, rural electrification happened in the late 1930s.
(4) Batteries were terrible in the 1910s. Good-enough batteries only became available in the last 10 years or so.
The best articles are the ones that are funny but have a serious point – like this one 🙂
“Some models however switches off the engine at a red light, he explained. Well that certainly makes more sense.” Love it! I thought you would miss that but you did mention auto start-stop haha
Excellent! This is a classic!
Would be great to see all the key points in a short video version, suitable for distribution on youtube or TV.
I’m sure Elon would love it!
+1 if you agree!
After reading these comments, I cannot escape the feeling that defenders of internal combustion are like tobacco smokers who have begun to see the writing on the wall. The age of smoking in public, whether tobacco or fossil fueled, is fast falling behind us.
Come on people. Electricity is not free. You either pay for it or you pay at least $70K for a Tesla. Either way you pay for it. Plus the article misses the whole point of what is cool about cars. They are a visceral experience. The sound of an engine, the control you have over the gears steering a mechanical device that ignites dead dinosaurs! How magical is that!? Electric cars are cool. But so are all other forms of cars. Anyone can use some strategically placed words to make something sound stupid. Elitism never gets you far with these kinds of things either.
Good one!
Great piece. I do exactly the same thing with some idiots who rebut regarding my EV’s and my range. I give them the inverse scenario and see where their ICE vehicles will reach.
I like the satire in the story, especially the one about recharging the car. Often people find it a disadvantage that you have to drive from supercharger to supercharger with an electric car. Forgetting that 335 days of the year (those that you’re not on holiday) you conveniently charge your elecrtic car at home, while the fuel car owners need to drive at least once a week to a petrol station some where on the route.
Very cute! Had to laugh at it. After driving my Model S for 15 months I have to agree the world will one day look back on the old ICE cars.
Bravo pal. That’s hilarious.
I cannot but sadly think that this review could have been written around 1900 too, when ICE vehicles (and boats) started to push electric ones off the market, the manufacturers closed, and the recharging points were disconnected. Such a waste.
and yet the petrol car is only 1/2 price
Not for the same type of car.
type is not important. this is now a toy for the rich, who have even free electricity. the poor must still fueling diesel
A BMW 7 series, the same type of large sedan, costs about the same price to buy. A Mercedes S class sedan is also around the same price or more. Those vehicles cost 5 times as much to power/fuel. Certainly those are not inexpensive vehicles which is because this is cutting edge technology. The people buying the Model S and Model X are paying high prices which support the future less expensive versions. There are definitely less expensive ways to travel.
Great write up. Sometimes things are that simple.
Brian Munch . This forum is only for mature Adults
One detail that was left out of the test drive was the part that they drove the gas powered car for 6 hours on a HWY and had no need to stop and plug into a charger and wait for hours for the quiet electric car to continue. As a matter of fact, after 6 hours of continuous driving, the gas tank was refueled completely within 7 minutes and the drive continued for an additional 6 hours.
I was surprised to learn that the car supported charging at a rate of about 300 miles per minute. I asked about the battery system and was told that the car uses a “liquid energy storage medium” and that 40 liters of this liquid weighed around 35 kilos as opposed to the 1000 kilos traditional batteries add to the weight of the vehicle. Naturally, I was skeptical. This represented a 33x improvement in energy density, and a nearly 100x recharge rate. Frankly, I think the salesman got his numbers wrong. I asked about the cost per km for this “liquid energy” and was told that where I lived in California, electricity from the grid was a more costly alternative. (He didn’t take into account the government plan to subsidize fuels costs for my U.S. $100,000 EV which makes makes my costs lowers than his “liquid energy”.)
are we being made to think a car that uses a second grade kids science project as a propulsion system is the future?? I’ll be nice, fifth grade.
Funny story. But seriously it’s neigh IMPOSSIBLE to have the same mpg for the last 30 years and have no significant breakthroughs in mpg. Look at every sector of life. From Tv’s, computers, phones, planes, medicine, satellites, camera, and so forth to see how we’ve advanced. Yet, a Smart car gets the same gas miles as a Honda accord. A motorcycle gets MARGINALLY better gas miles as a car. A knife in the wind. Why? So please spare me the “physics” of weight, coefficient drag etc.
We must have in the last 50 years graduated at EVERY Ivory league school the exact same engineers that have failed to make a car capable of getting 80 mpg. What’s that tell you about our Universities? Not a SINGLE breakthrough. NOT POSSIBLE. Yes we have more airbags, electronics and all sorts of advanced technology staring at you, but not in the engine. It’s business- I understand. Pay Big money to kill remarkable engines that get ultra high mpg. NOT a conspiracy. But one wonders when the “petrol” makers will unleash those engines that get exactly that before electric displaces them. Fact is a 120 mpg car will be better for the environment than any electric;)
The only way to make a 120 mpg car is to make an electric car and recharge it from a gasoline generator.
In fact, that’s basically what the Volt does, though it only gets 50+ mpg.
There are fundamental limitations to the gasoline engine. That’s why we use electric motors now.
@Gregory – there are plenty of people across the U.S. who haven’t a clue how to drive a standard and may not know that kind of transmission exists. And, no, they don’t live in rain forests, caves, or under rocks. Even those of us who have used manual transmissions for over sixty years (now driving a 6 speed Tacoma) sometimes let the clutch out too fast or shift into the wrong gear. I also drive a Prius and can understand the writer’s frustration with vehicles that burn fuel when sitting in traffic or at a stop sign. My ’08 Prius doesn’t come close to being a Tesla, but at a combined 51-53 mpg, I know how it feels to leave gas stations in my dust.
While I enjoyed a great deal of this rhetoric, I think it goes a bit too far.. Where does it go to far? Ok…
1) When they talk about the whole car’s body vibrating… Maybe if they’re driving a HUGO or a TRABANT, but today’s cars have almost no vibration.
2) Almost ALL cars are automatics these days – in fact, it’s HARD to find a standard anymore. So, the fact that a salesman would put someone in a manual BEFORE they asked if they knew how to drive a manual is a bit beyond comprehension.
3) When stopped a lot of the newer cars DO INDEED shut off the gas engine… Another one that the writer of this article conveniently forgot about.
4) When they talk about filling up FREE… Just look at the NEWS FROM TESLA recently where people have been getting letters about using superchargers too much! This “FREE” from Tesla won’t be free forever…
5) When they stopped the car… Even an electric car must be “turned off”, otherwise the on board electronics will continue to drain the battery, the heater and radio will continue to work, etc… They’re really piling it on high with this.
6) When they talk about the engine being HOT… I bet they didn’t go and touch the ELECTRIC MOTOR of that EV, did they? I can guarantee you that it WILL NOT be cool to the touch either!
7) They talk about gasoline leaking during a crash. This is not a very common occurrence despite the claims of this article.
Now – I love the Tesla Model S and the Model X too… I considered buying a Model S – one of the lower end models.. but, I did the analysis and instead ended up buying a used Porsche Cayenne Turbo. I figure with the cost difference between the New Model S and the Used Cayenne I will have enough gas to drive over 100,000 miles… and that doesn’t take into account the extra excise tax for a car that costs around double what I paid or any additional interest on the loan (though I did get a great rate of 1.75% on a used car loan for the Porsche)…
All modern gas cars shake constantly. Really. ALL of them. Try driving an electric car for a week, then go back to your gas car — you’ll feel the difference. I did. I thought my gas car didn’t shake before… but now I know better.
There is a lot of debate in the comments. What’s the point? I just charge my Tesla at home once a week and enjoy driving it. A friend of mine took his Model S for a tour of the American Southwest at no cost for charging and had no problems. You can read about it here: http://www.letsgetenergized.co.uk/archives/author/john-olver/
The comments below are hilarious, I think many people who are reading this article are completely misunderstanding the entire story…..its a satire!!!!!! The story is based upon the world in which electric cars are dominantly owned/driven by people and that gas/fuel engine cars were the new cars being introduced. It is supposed to symbolize how ridiculous the current auto industry is compared to what it could be in the future for electric. In addition, this story is portraying how silly gas/fuel cars are if you had lived in this satire world. I think many of you need to take the time to read and understand writing better.
This is a fun article, and it’s too bad that the combination of fanbois and critics can’t take it for what it is. Internal combustion engines clearly have issues, and so do electric cars. Apologists for electric cars have no problem modifying their lifestyle to comply with the time and frequency needed to charge, the relative scarcity of charging stations, the lower range in cold weather, etc. Gearheads get all macho about their machines and won’t accept the virtues of electrics. As usual, there is plenty of room between the two poles, and there is not one right answer for everybody.
Gas cars also have lower range in cold weather.
So that issue is really “the relative scarcity of charging stations (relative to gas stations)” again.
There seems to be some confusion in here as to wether you can actually get fully off the grid with Solar panels powering your home and Tesla car so I did the maths for you and placed it in a spreadsheet: https://robertmassaioli.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/can-my-tesla-model-s-be-charged-daily-by-the-solar-on-my-roof/
Conclusion: most homes should be able to easily use the solar on their roof to power their cars and homes. For high energy usage homes this will cost more but the more you use the more you pay. Simple. Hope this helps.
No free gas? Bummer. I drove 2300 mile in one week paying less than $20. I love EV driving. Will never go back to traveling bombs.
That is a very biased peace of writing. I wish you good look with your electric car in a cold winter night in Sweden when you running out of battery power and freeze to death while looking for a plug socket. Then you might remember there are still many advantages having a traditional gasoline powered engine. Don’t forget the investment of 100K Euro for a new Tesla which you can completely write off after 3 years since battery (memory effects) and technology progress will burn any value away.
Lets talk again when Tesla or other companies are able to build electric cars with a reach of 1000km for 20k Euro.
Latvian translation: http://www.grunte.lv/div/test-drive-of-a-petrol-car.php
I too would like an electric car, one that didn’t cost as much as my apartment.
Dear Mr. Blomhäll,
why have you deleted my comment with a link to the Latvian translation and haven’t included the Latvian language among the other 11?
What? On the contrary! Thanks for the translation! Added!
Please excuse me, Mr. Blomhäll, it was my error! My comment with the link first appeared at the top of the list, but then on the next day disappeared. I scrolled the whole list down but did not find it, that’s why I thought that it has been deleted. But now I understand that the comment was automatically rearranged and became unvisible behind the button “Visa fler kommentarer” which is named in Swedish. Thank you for adding the link! And for you great article, of course!
Nice article. Too bad a Tesla is more of a luxury good than an electric car. While the latter might be better than a gasoline car, the former isn’t. There aren’t even dealerships for Tesla’s in most of the world.
There aren’t dealerships for Tesla at all. You buy the car over the internet from their website. There are stores where you can see the car and get a test drive but they are not dealerships.
No I’m not buying a luxury product from their website and they don’t sell cars.
No one has said you have to buy their car. However many people do choose to buy their car. The Tesla Model 3, when it becomes available, will be half the price of a Model S.
Half the price is still +65.000 euro for a vehicle, you can not fill at a gas station. Nobody chooses that for transportation purposes. It’s a luxury item for guys, who don’t wear jewelry and don’t really need to get anywhere. Tesla is a company that publishes fancy maps of where they plan to have supercharger stations by the end of 2016. Meanwhile just don’t drive to Eastern Europe. Your so-called car doesn’t operate there.
You seem to be assuming that your lifestyle is everyone’s lifestyle. That is just not true. If it doesn’t work for you, then don’t buy the car or any car if that is your choice. Maybe you have the luxury of living very near where you work and shop. Maybe your city has a fantastic system for commuting that makes a car unnecessary. That is great. For those that do own a car and are constantly filling it at a gas station then an electric car is the choice that offers freedom from buying gasoline and diesel and burning it on a daily basis.
Electricity is everywhere. It can be generated in very clean ways. It is still just a choice amongst many other choices.
When you consume energy in form of electricity, you are “burning it” on the same daily basis as gasoline. In fact most of the worlds electricity is generated by burning fossils in a power plant somewhere. And while electricity is everywhere, quick enough charging is scarce. The Tesla hype lives on what the electric car experience could be, not what it is. Finding a charger is like looking for the needle in the haystack and the costs of ownership are horrible for everyone except the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Maybe a Tesla is good enough for somebody’s third car. The fun car. You may as well buy a Lamborghini. It serves kind of the same purpose.
Unless you driving more than 200 miles daily then an EV is more convenient than any gas car and very cost effective. Certainly the infrastructure for gas and diesel have been around for over 100 years making it have the history and backing to cover almost every situation. However, we are all paying the price for burning massive amounts of fossil fuels daily. Having an alternative, that might be the expensive alternative for now, is definitely a good thing for everyone. Not recognizing that and just dismissing it as the plaything for the wealthy shows an elitist and selfish attitude.
For now it seems the Eastern Europeans are being left out, I’m sure, for monetary and political reasons. Change the politics and make citizens more aware of the alternatives and support them where you can will help to change that attitude. Eastern Europe does not have to be left out in the cold and electricity is everywhere and it isn’t that hard to get a fast charger put in anywhere you want.
Electricity has many ways to be very clean. Burning fossil fuels is always dirty and will always be a finite source of energy. The alternatives are available, today, that are both clean and cost effective. The question is whether we all have the will to change. No one is saying you have to change but putting those down trying to make change happen is being part of the problem, not the solution.
The first Porsche ever build was an electric car. This propulsion technology is around for as long as all the others. It just didn’t gain acceptance, because of it’s many shortcomings. When the world needed power, gasoline was there to provide it. That’s why there is a Rammstein song called “Benzin”. You may ridicule petrol cars as much as you want, but they won the market by their merits. Every decade for the past century engineers have tried to make the electric car economically feasible without success. Elon Musk’s trick was to market the electric car to people who don’t know the value of money. If you have too much money and run out of ideas to waste it, you may as well buy a Tesla as a luxury item. All the reasons why electric cars don’t work out are hidden behind massive amounts of cash. It’s the alchemists dream of making gold. Today we can make gold in a laboratory, but the process is way more expensive than digging for it in the ground. The combustion engine isn’t an old, stupid, outdated idea. It’s what makes the world move and there is no alternative in sight that will replace it. In it’s socialistic past even more people in Eastern Europe used electric cars in the form of trolley busses than today. Tesla is the company to make sure in the future only oligarchs will drive with electricity.
I disagree with a number of your points.
First off, I do not hate petrol cars. That would be hypocritical. Petrol generated industry has given all of us the modern world as you mentioned.
Until now there wasn’t very good alternatives. That is not true anymore. There are alternatives. For now they are slightly costly but with mass production the prices will drop dramatically and the technology is constantly improving. Petrol cars are about as good as they will get.
Current electric cars are nothing at all like the electric cars that you mention. It is the equivalent of comparing the VW Beetle of 1940 to a modern one.
Elon Musk simply made an electric car that highlights every advantage of an electric car while removing its few disadvantages. You have a car that is as quick as a Lamborghini, while having the equivalent mileage that is twice as good as a Prius. It is very quiet and has lots of space. It also gives you the ability to generate your own power to charge your own vehicle. That is something that you could never do with a petrol car.
The electric motor is incredibly common in the industrial world, possibly as common as the combustion engine. The difference is that it is highly efficient, while the combustion engine is very inefficient. The waste products from the combustion engine are highly toxic and damaging. An electric motor has no waste products. Electrical power can come from very dirty sources to very clean sources. It is just a matter of building clean electrical power plants. That is something that most governments seem focused on doing anyway. A combustion engine will never be clean.
I’m sure there were people that argued over the merits of horses and animal power a hundred years ago when the petrol engine first showed up. You can accept change or stay rooted in the past Guderian.
Thank you for the discussion, by the way. I appreciate it.
You are as wrong as you are sure. Nobody argued in favor of the horse and claimed future horses wouldn’t get tired and won’t need to rest. Everybody knew a horse would always have one horse power. But your line of argument “stuck in the past”,”accept change” illustrates the fallacy in your thinking. In your mind the future is already a forgone conclusion. The highly uneconomic technology “of the future” just needs to go into mass production and somehow everything will work out. We’ve already run that experiment with solar power subsidies in Germany. You just blow up a giant growth bubble that will eventually burst and destroy everything it build up. As of now the Tesla business is healthy, because it is aimed at very few very rich people, who pay the bill. If you mass produce them, somebody else will have to pay the deficit of every single car sale, because there aren’t enough super rich people. For example the Norwegian government, which became rich by oil production, will pay the difference. But soon enough the yearly electric car subsidies will mount to billions and the government will have to cut them and the market will collapse. Tesla is not going to conquer the world with it’s battery technology and that’s the end of the story.
Your reasoning is flawed.
A petrol engine has an efficiency of less than 40%. That is a fact. When you burn fossil fuels the waste products are both deadly, toxic, and damaging. The unburned fuel is also a toxic sludge that is damaging. That is also a fact.
An electric motor is 90% efficient or better. Fact. Electricity can be generated in many very clean ways.
Mass production decreases cost. That is also a fact. That is why a cell phone used to cost thousands of dollars and was the size of a large boot. Improvements in technology, batteries, and being mass produced allows almost everyone to afford one that currently fits in your palm.
Norway does not “pay the difference.” Norway taxes drivers for the damage their petrol burning vehicle does instead of subsidizing that cost as most countries do. Norway simply doesn’t tax alternative fuel cars because they can be clean. That applies to all alternative fueled cars and is not limited to only Tesla.
Governments are recognizing that they have been subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for decades. The costs is in the tens of trillions when you consider health, military, and environmental damage. Giving a small break to potential alternatives is happening around the world. I agree that will eventually go away and certainly Tesla is prepared for it when it happens.
So again, you can stay with the current system that we are all paying for, or you can find an alternative that improves upon it. The future may be batteries or it may be some other energy storage device. The future will be electric though. The advantages are just too appealing and the cost is very close at this point.
Within 10 years there won’t even be an argument about this. The cost will be obviously in favor of an electric over the long term.
You are arguing in favor of the horse.
No you are a horse.
Electric cars did not gain acceptance back in the 1910s/1920s for four reasons:
(1) The batteries were very bad in the 1910s. We have much better batteries now.
(2) Many places didn’t have ELECTRICITY. Rural electrification in the US didn’t happen until the late 1930s.
(3) Where electricity existed, it was every expensive. Electricity is much cheaper now.
(4) Gasoline was extremely cheap. They gave it away at first since it was a waste product. Then it was $0.05 / gallon. Since the 1970s, gasoline has been much more expensive.
A Tesla Model S has been my only car, for daily errands and work and trips, for nearly 3 years now. Cost of ownership is substantially less than an Audi.
Yes, this is still upper middle class territory.
Looks lie a Yugo engine! ;]
A a Tesla stockholder, I say man up & pick a fair opponent, as pictured…
Running solar panels without any sunlight is easy with the help of radium chloride. Paint both sides of a sheet of paper with radium chloride, sandwich both sides with a pair of solar panels facing inwards, and hook them up to your electrical system.
Now, if only I could get my local building codes review board and the Atomic Energy Commission to appove it!
But if somebody else’s disapproval is not an “issue”, then why not create a battery pack for an electric car out of alternating layers of solar panels and these replaceable painted sheets?
Then this starts to sound like one of the varieties of Tesla legends involving an electric car whose non-rechargeable battery pack only required changing out its (radium?) plates once every few hundred miles (300-500 depending on whose version of this story is retold). And the process of exchanging the old plates for the newer replacements was so easy that a child could do it in a matter of minutes! Golly, gosh!
And a whole year’s supply of these plates could fit into the trunk of a car! Wow!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqw15tLPsIw
I had a go in a petrol car once and I came out in the morning and it was covered in frost and really cold!
If you park your Tesla, the battery will lose energy every single day? And then you’re worried about the engine continuïng to work in a traffic delay? That’s funny, modern cars don’t even do it, and when you compare cars from the previous century with modern cars, you should compare it to an electric car from the previous century as well.
I’ve just read the german translation. This is a really awesome piece of an article. Thanks you very much. I had to laugh and cry very often at the same time. Hopefully the article doesn’t apply anymore in 10 years.
(Here is my german electromobility forum)
You even have to wait next to your car while it is loaded!
During fillg, expect to inhale some of the noxious gases that are replaced in the tank by the petrol. After that, you have to visit the cafeteria next to the filling station to pay, but now the time you spent while filling, that would have been sufficient for a quick coffee, has passed away already.
And electric cars are really much better for the climate! Less green house emissions now already and this is only going to be less in the future.
https://innovationorigins.com/correcting-misinformation-about-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-electric-vehicles-auke-hoekstras-response-to-damien-ernsts-calculations/
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