The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
If – as Tesla’s carefully choreographed public relations machine maintains – the range issue has been solved and the car’s functional performance (as distinct from how quickly it can accelerate on a full charge . . . once or twice) is as good as implied – why not send me one to test drive?
I test drive new cars every week. All the major car companies (except GM, lately, for breach of political correctness) send me their vehicles for a week at a time, to drive them around and then relate to you how they drive – their good and bad points, etc. This is meant to be helpful to you, the prospective buyer.
But not a single electric car, so far.
How come?
Leaving aside the possibility of animosity – I have written unflatteringly about Elon and his crony capitalist business model – the reasons, methinks, are as follows:
I live too far from the press fleet staging areas; there is not an EV available that could make the trip without a pit stop to recharge overnight. No “fast” chargers on I-81, the main and only north-south Interstate between the press hubs for the northeast region in the DC area and my redoubt in the Woods of rural southwest Virginia. It’s a one-way drive of about 250 miles – and you have to drive at about 75 continuously (the speed limit is 70) if you don’t want to have Kenworths leaving tire tracks up and down your back.
This is a problem for electric cars. They are optimized for low-speeds, not high ones. And for short bursts, not continuous vigorous exercise. 
It is also probably a problem for you – unless you have a flatbed chase vehicle. Or have strategically staged “fast” chargers along the route. The problem is that outside of (cue Arnold voice) Kulivornia there aren’t any such. Not outside of the city’s inner ring, either. Which makes trips beyond the ring problematic – for Tesla and for you, if you end up buying one and intend to ever drive farther than about 100 miles from your electric umbilical and at more than a crawl.
I would test the Tesla’s vaunted quickness repeatedly – to see what the effect would be on the battery pack’s charge, as this affects range.
I would want to know whether the range is reduced appreciably by sustained high-speed driving.
It would be embarrassing – and rather ridiculous – if it turns out that the Tesla’s “insane” mode – the button you push to set the car up for maximum effort acceleration – is only good for a couple of quick bursts of speed. That if you use the performance the car touts more than very occasionally, your zero to 60 time will not be 4 seconds or less but . . . stationary.
While you wait for the battery pack to recharge.
I would also use the AC – full blast, not tepid to “save energy.” And the heat, full hot. I would want to test the car on a very hot day as well as a very cold day. And see what the effect the use of necessary accessories has on the battery pack’s charge state. Because if I am buying a $40k-plus car, I want to not freeze in winter – or have sweat stains under my armpits in summer.
I am willing to bet real money that the Tesla’s touted range is advertising hype of a piece with cons that swoon marks with claims that “you could earn a six figure income working from home today!”
Yes, you could. But probably won’t.
It’s my bet that range is not even half what is advertised when the car is driven remotely aggressively and the accessories uses liberally. I suspect Tesla knows this. It explains why only “select” journalists – which isn’t me – are allowed anywhere near one unsupervised.
The journalists who are allowed seat time may be “select” but they’re not journalists. Guys like this Frederic Lambert character, who gets rewarded by Tesla for steering marks their way.
It tells you something, or ought to. Like the faint whiff of smoke that wakes you up late at night.
I want to be fair to Tesla – to electric cars generally.
To be as clear as 190 proof grain alcohol about where I stand on this business: I am not opposed to electric cars at all. I am merely very skeptical about them, as far as their practicality and their economic sensibility.
It seems strange to me that, rather than tout how economical they are, most EV makers – and Tesla in particular – focus on how sleek and quick their cars are. Well, so is a Porsche. But the Porsche – assuming it’s not an elektrische Porsche – isn’t subsidized and they don’t need to flatbed one to get one to me for a test drive.
If I’m wrong about electrics, I will not be unhappy about admitting it. If it turns out that one can drive a Tesla as one would and could and should drive any other high-dollar luxury-sport sedan without functional repercussions, I will sing it to the heavens. If the thing’s range isn’t much-affected by the full use of necessary accessories such as the AC and heat and headlights, I will tell all who ask and gladly.
I think it would be great if electric cars performed better than IC-engined cars. Or even just as well. Even better, if they were more economical to own than an IC-engined car. Only a maniac or a fool would be opposed to better and cheaper.
But I have my doubts.
Tesla could dissipate these by sending me one of their cars to drive for a couple of days. That would be the proverbial proof of the pudding.
But so far, no go.
Which says a lot about the likely truth behind the EV agitprop.
. . .
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I just took a quick look at Tesla’s website, and they DO have superchargers down there. One is in Wytheville, and the other is in Bristol, TN. I don’t know how far or close those are to you though. I’d be curious to see your review of a Tesla…
Eric,
Since I wrote the above comment over 1.5 years ago, more superchargers have gone in. The closest one to you is in Salem, VA. There are destination chargers that are closer, but the closest supercharger is in Salem. There are others in Lexington, Wytheville, and Bristol too. There are PLENTY around the DC area! There are others along the way, so there’s no reason why Tesla couldn’t get a press vehicle to you. Anyway, there’s a supercharger located near you. Tesla has NO EXCUSE for not sending you a press vehicle.
Hi Mark,
Well, they do have an excuse. It is that I am openly hostile to their business model and to the force-feeding of EVs generally. They also know I’m not going to overlook their build quality and poor design issues, either.
Also – more broadly: EVs are fundamentally not about driving. They are meant put an end to driving. Does one read review of Airbusses?
Will Tesla become the next Blackberry? IMO it’s inevitable. Lithium Ion Batteries will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. The Fiskar which was an attempt at a plug in electric that went tits up in 2012 is about to release new battery technology that will revolutionize the energy storage sectors. They will be Solid State Graphene Batteries that will have an energy density 2.5 times that of Lithium. They can be recharged in as little a 1 minute. They will also last many more cycles than any current battery. Best of all with economy of scale they will be much cheaper than Lithium and non flammable. I’ve been using some Graphene / Lithium Ion Hybrids for over a year now and am thoroughly impressed. The new technology which I’ve been following for years promises orders of magnitude better performance than these. Elon has more than just AI to worry about.
All other things aside, this is the problem with evolving complex technologies: They become obsolete fast, as new and better ones are developed. Only unlike Blackberries and Betamaxes, when it comes to something which requires a whole infrastructure to support- like EVs- one is faced with the prospect of constantly having to tear-down the old and erect new ones…or of limiting the type of technology that can be used, so that the infrastructure remains usable.
The same thing will be the case with “self-driving” cars. Today’s attempts will seem laughable in the future; but if today’s attempts are implemented, there’s no way that they can change a nationwide infrastructure again 10 years from now, to accommodate the latest and greatest.
That is one reason why all of this will fall apart. It is unsustainable. It looks good [depending on what your definition of “good” is!] for the moment…but tomorry it’s an 8-track tape! Only unlike a stand-alone product of the free market….it would be an 8-track tape that we’d be stuck with, which would prevent us from using MP3s.
This is why I’ve been saying that a new Dark Age is upon us. Socially; politically; technologically. They’re pushing the limits of sustainability; they’re using extorted redistributed wealth to fund Buck Rogers’s fantasies.
Can they be so blind as to not see this, or is it by design; to use as an excuse to destroy the present infrastructure, and replace it with one which is not viable nor sustainable, so that in effect, the masses are reduced dwelling in cities and walking or using “public transport”? I’d say the latter. And in the mean-time, all the cronies and politicians get to bask in all the extorted wealth which they use to accomplish this.
I believe you’re right on the Dark Ages Nunzio. We’re certainly going to see a paradigm shift. It remains to be seen how we fare as a civilization. But it’s rare that we humans go through radical change peacefully.
What’s interesting too, QQ, is that we can see the same scenarios repeated through history. It seems like whenever empires grow huge, and there is a lot of tech, and vast foreign trade and interconnectedness and immigration/migration; and political leeches become ubiquitous; and society corrupt and degenerate; that a sudden end comes.
What makes this time unique- humanly and secularly speaking, is that never before have so many people been believers in gooooooovernment, above all. The first thing on most people’s minds in any doomsday scenario or other vacuum of “authority”, is to implement some form of government… : (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKQPHC4JyAU
After nearly 22 minutes detailing the issues with his new Tesla Model S, the car’s owner summed it up this way, “Despite all of these little tiny problems that I have had, this is a fantastic car and I’ve enjoyed driving it almost every single day.”
Hi Jeffersonian,
Of course! It’s like cult leaders admitting the Rev. has some issues but they’ll follow him just the same…
Is that what you really believe? If so (or if not), why not interview the Tesla owner who produced the video?
Hi Jeffersonian,
See the latest article about the BMW e scooter…
Thank you. Good review.
Thanks, Jeff!
It gets worse than that! That putz was just detailing the minor annoyances!
What about the MAJOR annoyances, like:
Auto-pilot which may kill you.
Cars that burst into flames.
Way higher insurance premiums, ’cause a Tesla can be totaled for a small dent, since Tesla is essentially not making body panels availble for repairs; and the fact that Tesla is disabling (via the computer, through the wi-fi) cars reported as “totaled” because they’re trying to prevent rebuilt Teslas from appearing on the market.
Etc. etc.
These turkeys are gonna be in the textbooks before long as the classic example of promising the Moon and delivering turds to starry-eyed believers who were more interested in image than reality.
And just wait until all of the short-comings become more well-known, and the massive depreciation starts!
Every generation has it’s fads. In the past, it was Hula-hoops and Mood Rings- but at least those things only cost a few bucks. Today’s fad costs tens of thousands of dollars…..
This could be a reason why they won’t let you have a Tesla to drive aside from your above “flatbed” required delivery (outside of the typical driving range of the vehicle).
Angry Tesla Owner Shares 25 Minute Video Detailing Just One Year Of Model S Service Issues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKQPHC4JyAU
Hi Damion,
Yup, got a rant in progress!
Did you ever consider they may not have any to spare( seems like they are having problems filling the orders on the new ones) and have you ever seen any meaningful, honest,advertisments ?
We could easily have a viable economical electric car system if the capital to create it was directed that way. Once again it’s “The Usual Suspects” that prefer we continue to use ever more difficult to extract hydrocarbons. The CAPEX of the Petroleum Industry is in the hundreds of billions every year to develop and exploit new technologies. We won’t go any further in pointing out the vast sums squandered elsewhere. Had just the 1 Trillion purloined by the infamous F35 Turkey been devoted to a hydrogen alternative you’d probably be able to drive a thousand pound lighter, 30 grand cheaper Tesla from San Francisco to New York on less than a gallon of water, pedal to the metal the whole way. There is more energy in an olympic swimming pool than the US uses in a year. It only needs to be unlocked. And the tech to do so economically is only lacking the capital to become reality.
I am with you 100 percent on the disgusting waste of our resources on “defense.”
But, on the other hand, gas is inexpensive, efficient and practical – three things EVs are not. It doesn’t compute – to me – why there is this massive push for EVs – not by the market, but by government and rent-seeking crony capitalists … unless the object is to get people out of their cars or into more controlled cars.
One cool thing about a Hydrogen economy is that current Internal Combustion vehicles can benefit from it. They are already developing methods of running cars with hydrogen and no special storage tanks to do so. The hydrogen is locked in small spherical polymers that behave like a liquid and can be burned in internal combustion engines. It should have better energy density than gasoline and burns clean.
Only trouble is: It takes more money and more energy to produce that hydrogen, that no one could afford to use it without heavy subsidies.
So like EVs, what is the point? Why do we need an alternative to something which already works just fine and is quite efficient- o.e. internal combustion engines?
Seems like all of these so-called alternatives are just schemes to enact more crony capitalism/subsidies and control. (And you can be sure, just like the Global Warming BS, THAT is the real point)
What exactly would be the point of having a viable electric car system? There would be no less emissions- just a relocation of emissions; There would be no economy, because extracting the energy from a fuel remotely and then transfering it in another form to the source which uses it, does not accomplish anything. etc.
So what would be the point, other than to have electric cars for the sake of having electric cars?
If you can crack the hydrogen oxygen bond of water in situ the whole problem of infrastructure becomes ludicrous. MIT research has made great strides developing methods of converting water to it’s constituent components without using electricity to accomplish this. If money poured into this like it does to oil exploration it would be reaching a point where they could convert water to hydrogen with less energy in than is recovered. You’d have no factories requiring huge power grids to convert water to hydrogen gas. No transport system, no storage and not nearly the amount of environmental degradation as now. Just pour water in your tank and drive. Can you begin to see why we will never be allowed to have this with our current crony capitalist oil monopoly. The empowerment of the individual and the threat this is to the status quo in every sector of the energy industry.
That’s why they give us a clown like Elon and his subsidized scaled up RC bumper car to distract from the viable path. That and as Eric said this is all part and parcel of the end of the current automotive paradigm, and to force us into the machine like it or not.
Any time they try and transgress the bounds of natural physics, there are deadly consequences- just like with nuclear energy. You can make it viable….but at what “price”? The price is everlasting pollution, death and ruination- which is supposed to be what those who propose all of these alternate energy sources are trying to avoid.
So they would have us overthrow a relatively simple, efficient and safe system, whose infrastructure is already well-established; and which promotes freedom, for what?
Nunzio there is nothing at all simple and safe about petroleum. It’s toxic. It’s extremely difficult to acquire from the ground. It’s dangerous to store and handle. And it is a ecological dilemma to say the least. If you don’t live near a fossil fuel producing area it’s hard to appreciate. It’s been posited here that Musk wouldn’t be doodly squat without his CorpGov subsidies. I agree! But I’ll make the argument now that the only reason we have cheap gas is because the oil industry as a whole is by far the most heavily subsidized industry in the world. They get tax breaks and legal loopholes that no other industry gets. The other major subsidy nobody likes to talk about is the money spent “securing” our overseas energy endeavors. Yes our defense budget just happens to be primarily devoted to protecting the interests of our national security / oil addiction / petrodollar. So while the cost to us plebes at the pump may be tolerable the hidden costs we pay everywhere else are not.
True, QueeQuog- which is why I said “relatively”. All of the alternatives either have the same pitfalls and more- or introduce even more pitfalls. i.e. electric generating requires either the aforementioned petroleum; or mining of coal; or the craziness of nukes; etc. Hydrogen production also requires the use of such fuels, in spades, with additional subsidies on top of what you mention- so no matter how ya slice it, we go from bad, to worse when chasing these so-called “better” alternatives.
Petroleum is no more toxic than countless other things. And good luck having solar and wind power let alone electric cars without it.
The wars are to keep oil off the market. To keep it under control of a very small group. To keep prices high. All the wealth stolen by government and transferred to big oil is designed to produce higher prices to the end user, not lower.
I’m just happy mercury doesn’t naturally come to the surface.
It does. You can gather it in gold pans in the mountains to the west of here.
Hi QueeQueg,
With you on this, completely. Several others here as well – though I will let them speak for themselves.
The powers-that-be want us dependent and tied to the system; inexpensive, uncontrolled (from a central power) energy is anathema to these people.
Queeq,
While no one on the planet denies we need to develop alternate energy sources and
clean energy sources, what is on the market today iyo , that is *in adequate production* that
is clean , safe , responsible, renewable and better than petrol powered vehicles?
I’m not asking coulda, woulda, would be nice if, what do we have today?
Also , as Eric is pointing out , the push is for Grid , Big Grid, and do you have an idea of what
scale ‘Big Grids’ fail ?
And as a side note, when/if they get us into a Cashless society, do you realize that they can cut you
off from buying food, shelter , clothing etc, without ever having committed a crime, without
ever being tried for a crime , they can literally have you starve to death in the streets, because
‘they can’ , and did you know that during a grid fail your ATM will not be able to give you any cash,
how many local super markets do you and your neighbors deal with that will be happy extend you credit
to buy food, what gas stations or ‘electric stations’ do you patronize that will fill it up for free?
I have the impression this will be one of the most-commented articles ever posted by you. Both pro and con will shout from the mountaintops about their preference.
My biggest objection to electric cars is the amount of extra requirements forced upon the electric grids, when there is already an infrastructure in place for powering motorized vehicles. The American Society of Civil Engineers rates our electric grid close to failing, and vehicle manufacturers want to put more load requirements on that same grid, to the point of requiring the creation of many new distribution points (or what their supporters call, “recharging stations”) being established along all the important motor routes.
If the electric car will be the norm in the United States, the first thing that will be needed is a complete upgrade of the electric grid, to handle the extra demands built in by electric car use. Yet I don’t see any of the electric proponents talking about this. I don’t even hear them talking about grid security, unless they are the doomsayers on the other side of the fight.
I think balanced energy use from all sources is better than trying to force electrification of all our vehicle fleet.
To alleviate the long charge times and extend range one could make the battery packs modular. When run down you pull into the local battery rental and have a new pack inserted while leaving the old pack to recharge. If you needed more range your vehicle would accommodate a larger pack or multiples of a standard size. This would serve to make the batteries last longer too as the faster you charge them the less cycles you get out of them. They can be slow charged and properly balanced for the next customer.
Hi Quee,
This strikes me as fantasy. The logistics alone. EVs would need to be completely redesigned, then there would have to be some automated means of replacing packs in minutes, without glitches, at a cost comparable to refueling a car.
Cue Rube Goldberg.
Why?
Am I the only one who isn’t sniffing glue? We have an efficient, cost-effective, existing infrastructure to refuel cars in less than 5 minutes.
Why is anyone seriously advocating throwing that away and wasting billions on the erection of a new infrastructure – much more complicated – to “solve” a problem that does not exist?
And all for what? Just to relocate the emissions from the individual tailpipes to collective smokestacks…..
I think this could be an option for pick-up trucks. You buy your truck with 100 to 150 miles range (suitable for urban/suburban driving cycles) and leave an optional connection in the truck bed to rent or buy an additional battery if you need to do longer hauls. If you only need occasional range, then rent a battery and return it to the dealer.
Hi Electron,
An option, certainly – but not an economical or practical one!
That is my bone to pick with this whole thing; the unreality of it all.
As with electric cars, electric trucks would cost more and have serious functional/practical limitations that render them a poor choice vs. an IC-engined vehicle.
Right-on, Eric! This crazy nonsense is right up there with living in colonies on the Moon! (The young’uns probably don’t know that they actually used to preach that in the pooblik skools from the 50’s through at least the 70’s).
I mean could you imagine having to drive to some location (In the biggest cities, it’s hard to even find a gas station!)- and except for some favored locales, imagine the time and mileage and inconvenience involved to go to the battery exchange place?! Then it would either have to be during normal bidness hours, or they’d have to have employees available at all hours…and every time you decided you wanted to do something more than a quick local run with your pick-up (Towing a heavy trailer would zap the batteries down real fast, so a lot of P/U owners, even not going that far, would need the battery exchange…), etc. etc.
And all for what?
What is being accomplished which is better than what we have now with IC vehicles? Where’s the benefit?
And that (as you know) is the whole problem with this EV crap- It’s expensive; it’s impracticle; and where are the benefits?
It’s like the only “benefit” is the ability to say “Oooo, we’re so cool because we have hi-tech electric cars…”.
Man! I was just watching some Tesla fanboi video….. They refer to Musk[rat] as a “visionary genius”- then mention [with a straight face, no less] that he intends to colonize Mars by 2022…LOL- I guess they’re skipping straight over the Moon, and shooting for Mars now!
Turns out, per the vid, that only those who bought their Testes prior to January of 2017 are “grandfathered in” to get the free electricity from the pooblik chargers… Guess everyone else has to pay now. That didn’t last long, did it!
Hi Nunz!
It’s become comical; anything the guy says is not only accepted, it’s accepted adoringly. No matter how absurd – Mars buses just four years from now! – they (the media) never call him out.
It’s as if the entire press is in the throes of dementia. Or they’re just that gullible.
Steve Jobs was a visionary genius. Werner Von Braun, too. His rockets actually worked.
I’ll tell ya, Eric, it makes me ashamed to be of this world, that so many people would believe this nonsense- Mars in 4 years- meanwhile it took longer than that to bring one of his car models to market!!!
Thank goodness- at least there is one dissenting voice- a voice of reason: You. But it really says something about the state of humanity today, that there are so few others. I mean, it’s not as if we’re talking about some esoteric conspiracy or something; we’re just talking about pipe-dreams and nonsensical rantings….but critical thought has become such a rarity, that the majority accept the nonsense like 5 year-olds in awe of a fireman.
It’s truly scary, because if the ranks of mindless lemmings are that great, there is virtually no evil which they will restrain or be restrained from. Useful idiots; whose minds and bodies are being controlled like drones.
Not only is it the presstitutes that accept his “visions”; it’s the dolts that are manipulating the government actions that follow him blindly. His “visions” suddenly become the drivers of government policy.
As I will reiterate I don’t believe battery powered cars will ever dominate the roads or even the E market for much longer unless they move away from Lithium batteries at least and at most to onboard power production. Hybrid Diesel Electric power has already more than proven it’s efficiency for over 75 years in the form of railroads as well. Batteries are so 20th Century! And this from a guy who has been designing DC brushless power systems for 25 years.
I enjoyed this article much more than the coworker who gave it to me expected. He warned me it was anti-EV. Eric, I think you have an appalling lack of knowledge of EVs. Given that, I think your poor opinion of EVs could come from your many misunderstandings. For example, your statement of there being no DC fast chargers in your neck-of-the-woods is not true. If you check the Plugshare website http://www.plugshare.com, you will find many Tesla Superchargers and other DCFCs in your area. Another example is you concern about A/C. This is a common question I’ve been asked and can confirm that even in my LEAF A/C is not a significant range killer. I would be happy to discuss any EV topics with you. Admittedly, I bought my LEAF more as political statement: I”m willing to be on the front lines in coming fight against CC”. Frankly, without that motive, my concerns would have kept me away from buying an EV in 2013. Now, I truly look at the drivers around me with pity that they have to drive those putt-putts and don’t know the awesomeness of EVs. I consider myself an EVangelist love to sell an EV to anyone for whom one is practical. Once a year there are Drive Electric events around the country. Here’s one right in your area: https://driveelectricweek.org/event.php?eventid=1157. This year I even let an attendee test drive my car, since Nissan didn’t show up with their cars.
Even if an electric car were practical for me and I could afford it I would not purchase one, as a political statement against the lunatic Left, against government attempts to force the marketplace in a particular direction, and most of all as a political statement that climate change is a natural phenomenon that has nothing at all to do with what kind of car I drive, what kind of light bulbs I use, or anything else that I or anyone else does.
The idea of human-caused climate change (and the attendant nonsensical idea that WE will take control of the Earth’s climate) is the biggest scam to come down the pike in many a year. It is promulgated via the use of cherry picked and falsified data pumped through faulty computer simulations yielding 2+2=5. Governments love it because it gives them massive power and an enormous increase in stolen tax revenue. The U.N. loves it, believing this is the issue that will finally permit them to assume the role of global governance that organization was created for. It’s a bureaucrat’s wet dream. The “fight” against this nonexistent problem needs to be derailed.
I drive a car with a big thirsty V8, continue to use incandescent lighting, and refuse to put solar panels on my home. That’s my political statement.
Glad some Folks like to pay big electric bills ( I don’t) any way you can get a decent PV( turnkey system for about 20K( about a third the cost of a new diesel pickup and this system will last as long or longer then aforementioned chariot( hint it doesn’t use Li-Ion batteries either) and actually it will pretty well keep you going I suppose you could use it to intermittently charge something like a Leaf( I wouldn’t do it overnight, however) hard to use homebrew gas and another big joke is that biodiesel wallet Lightner.
Electrics have their place and it seems that that final takeover is accelerating at a rapid pace, the point is we may not even be able to get any significant amount of Petroleum to get us going everything is tied to the grid and with the proper failsafes we could at least have private electricity, therein lies the problem, anything that is electric or can be conductive can literally cease to function after a “Carrington” style event, there will be scarcely anything electric or electronic up and going after this happens , predictions say 90% of the current population will die off within a year.And the only things running will be old mechanical diesels( with air starters or some sort of shielded starting systems, the much-vaunted petroleum will be “stillborn) It won’t even be as good as Mad Max, the only people thriving will be Folks like the Mennonites and their ilk that use only late or mid 19th century technology existing stocks of petroleum will have to be manually acquired , so it goes .
What some of Folks should be doing rather than dissing electricity is to be actively harassing your gov’t officials about hardening the grid and putting some vital pieces in faraday cages or old microwave ovens to protect them( coils , magnetos, ad nauseum) any thing of an electric or electronic nature can be affected, we dodged the bullet in 2012 when the mass ejection from the Sun was headed away from our direction, I think it was worse than the Carrington event.
It would only take a very small part of our
‘offense ” budget to really help harden the grid , maybe something like that is whar We should be on Ol’ Musky arse about something like that- because as the Kid said in “Beyond Thunderdome” “We are all dead meat” or at least a fair amount of us, petrol is blood , electricity is life’
Eric at least your home state is taking some small steps in protecting the Grid.
‘
Hi K,
I like the idea of having such a system – it’s the $20k outlay that puts me off. Way beyond what I can afford, so I’d have to take out a loan – and I won’t do that. Better to pay a monthly $60 electric bill than be in debt for the next ten years. And much more at the mercy of them, on account of that debt.
The problem with electricity – home generation and cars – is it’s too complicated and expensive up front. I grant all your points about petroleum. But unless something really bad happens…
And if something really bad does happen, well, I’m out of that game. No Mad Max for me.
“No Mad Max”….
Ya know, if more people lived like you and I, Eric; on some acreage, they’d find that the need to drive is greatly reduced.
Back when I lived in the city and the ‘burbs, where one’s home was just a place to sleep and keep stuff, I used to rack-up the mileage. Now that I live in the country- even though the store is 17 miles away, I rarely drive, because life revolves around my home and land.
“They” keep talking about “sustainability” as they herd everyone into cramped cities, where they have to live in shoeboxes, and where they are forced to travel to and fro for every little thing they do- and whether it be in personal cars, or buses or trains or whatever, the average person is traveling thousands of miles per year, just to accomplish the tasks of everyday life. Now THAT doesn’t seem very sustainable.
Well the solar panels are not the problem( they last a long ,long time and the Nickle -Iron batteries are in for the long haul too( Forget Lithium and Flooded Lead-acid) If things get so bad so quick I hope the event claims Me quickly, no need to live in fear for 6 months only to be ambushed and killed, the quality of life wouldnt be there.
Some of these outliers will get pretty sick and lonely , the bad thing about this scenario is that can happen overnight and there are sick fucks that would jump for joy if something like this happens.When I hear someone boasting about living off the land, I have to do a double take , these people probably wouldnt last long when the Beanie Weenies and Ramen ran out.Its much better to pull with a group and try to get these Kleptocrats we have elected to at least have a little concern for the common man, there won’t be enough “Greenbriers” to go around if something bad happens .
Brent the Yankees were getting PV systems at a very healthy discount before the subsidies ran out, one good thing about your own power is that when the neighbor’s lights go out, you are not inconvenienced.And according to the Folks I have talked to with PV systems are very reliable( except for the Lead acid batteries)
At $60 month it takes 27.75 years to pay off a 20K system that requires no care, has no failures, and doesn’t have to be replaced. In 25 years it’s more that likely going to need major updates and replacing of components so that’s optimistic at best. Even if it worked it is paying the electric bill up front. But if you sell the place and move it stays behind, a prepaid electric bill for the new owner. Sure if there are people willing to pay extra for it you might get some back in selling, but you need to find that buyer. Most people won’t be so interested in paying off your infrastructure investment.
Hi Carl,
There are a few “fast”chargers in my general area, yes. None convenient. And note that there would need to be many thousands of them in order to avoid Recharge Gridlock, were there more than a relative handful of electric cars on the road. Even then, imagine all those cars queued up for their turn, to wait for 30-45 minutes, in order to go another relatively short distance. How is this “put put” vs. being able to refuel almost anywhere in 5 minutes and go 400 miles in a car that costs half as much as your Leaf?
Just some questions.
Now some facts:
Nissan sends me every model they sell… except the Leaf. Why? It is because the car cannot make the trip from DC to SW Va in a single trip on its own “steam.” It has to be flatbedded – or they have to put the driver up overnight due to multiple stops to recharge – and that is too much hassle.
On AC: I will not believe that the use of an accessory that draws a great deal of power does not reduce battery range noticeably without having tested this myself. I mean full cold, on a hot day. Not just running the fan.
I would like to see what effect the cold winters of SW Va have on the thing’s range. Batteries do not like extremely cold weather; heat generated electrically uses a lot of electricity. Ever run a plug-in space heater in winter? How do you suppose your car generates heat?
You do not mention the effect of acceleration/use of power on the range of the vehicle. As a Leaf owner – as opposed to a Tesla owner – you probably drive your car like an ordinary economy car. But then, what’s economical about a $30,000 car?
The Tesla driver is driving a luxury-performance car. But if he uses the performance, the range dips – a lot.
Are these “appalling” facts – or not?
The most appalling fact, however, is the one almost all electric partisans avoid dealing with: If – as your post suggests – EVs are so got-damned wonderful, why is it necessary to legislate and subsidize their manufacture? Do you really believe Nissan would be making Leafs were it not for the legislative/regulatory fatwas? Do you think Tesla would even be in business?
I would like to see you get an EV to test drive. I think you’ll find the performance is not just hype. AFAIK quick acceleration doesn’t have a big hit on range. Typically off the line after a light, I can look in my rear view mirror and see the other cars just coming of the line as I’m a block away.
Yes, cold weather is an issue with EVs and my LEAF seems to be worse the most EVs. I am on Long Island NY and have seen morning temps near 0 F. The LEAF doesn’t handle this well but most EVs do much better I understand. Since the issue is mostly battery temp, preconditioning can easily lessen this issue. LEAFs do not do preconditioning. My preconditioning is my garage.
Sure high speed driving is big range killer. Even though the LEAF motor is quite efficient at wide range of power levels, there is still the problem of wind resistance. But wait, I can drive a gas car at 55, 65, 75 MPH and the mileage only drops a little. What is going on here? The efficiency while driving at 55 is so horrendous that the increase in efficiency as you increase in speed is almost entirely swamping out the effect of the wind resistance. No, you shouldn’t be driving my LEAF in your area but Tesla, Bolt, 2018 LEAF will soon be join by others.
Everything you say about legislative/regulatory fatwas is of course hard to argue with. You know where I stand on that issue and I won’t try to defend the wide ranging subsidies we enjoy. I can only say that I have seen projections that EVs will be price competitive by 2024. And the price of the Li-ion batteries actually dropped faster the the projections at T-zero of the modern EV era. Those gazillion people who have signed up for the Model 3 won’t be getting the federal tax credit and “no free Supercharging for you”. I would like to think the biggest draw of the Model 3 is the performance. Unfortunately, I know it is their ego telling them to buy the cool car, which also has awesome performance.
EV’s will always be limited by two things, and nothing will change them. Batteries take time to charge. The faster you charge them, the more heat they generate and their lifespan is shortened accordingly.
The other elephant in the room is that our electrical grid is in no way capable of supporting the charging capacity that these EV’s would demand. The upgrades necessary will be stopped at every turn by the radical greens concerned that the addition of a single line might have a negative effect on the mating habits of mildew. Then we get into generation, where we can’t build dams, we can’t build nuclear, we can’t build coal/natural gas/trash burners, solar requires gobs of open land, the giant windmills wipe out birds wholesale, and the list goes on.
Under our current system, EV’s will only be what they were for the last hundred years or so – a novelty that works only for a small percentage of the (urban and large suburban) population. Regardless of technological upgrades and empty promises, until the government and the lawyers go away, the EV will never be a viable replacement for IC engines.
Hi Carl,
The performance isn’t the problem. It’s the economics and the practicality. That’s the rub.
EVs have to tout their performance – that is, their acceleration – because the economics and practicality are very hard sells.
Your Leaf, for instance.
In what way is it economically superior to a $15,000 IC economy car? It will take many years to work off the difference in what you paid vs. the difference in what you save on gas. And that is not taking into account the near-certainty that your Leaf will not last as long as the $15k economy car, nor the fact that the price of the Leaf (and all EVs) is massively subsidized.
The true cost of your Leaf is closer to $40k.
It just doesn’t add up.
The sad thing is, absent the mandates and force-feeding, someone might have developed a sensible EV. One that emphasizes economy, not how quick it is or stylish or laden with gadgets. One that cost say $15,000 or so – and was meant for city/suburban use. Forget long trips on the highway – that is a huge problem for an EV.
But instead, we get atrocities like the Tesla.
I wake up every day and feel like I’m in crazy world. I just get to finance all the shit made to silence me. What a great deal for TPTB.
And now according to CIA’s Google I can’t even post a link to the apocalyptic even govt. has planned for us. Nov. 04-06 is going to be a storm based black out for communications. You can read it on Blacklisted News or Zero Hedge(original article).
8, I’ve heard that too- but ya know what? Never believe these predictions, as they are virtually always wrong. If it were true, WE wouldn’t know about it.
It could even be true- BUT like all the past predictions of these sorts of events, NOT on the date, or even in the year in which they say. It’ll be so long down the road, that everyone will have forgotten about it; and “truthers” of old will have long given up after hyping such things which never seem to come to pass.
I think that is the true purpose for such predictions- to create disinfo. Someone starts hearing of these things and gets all excited and tells everyone they know….then they end up looking the fool when the date passes without incident. They still keep faith for a while, but eventually stop proclaiming it to others…and then ultimately stop believing it themselves after a time, and are thus effectively neutralized, because from that point on, they won’t believe anything, and will dismiss everything as “tin-foil hat” stuff- which is the government’s whole purpose in spewing this info.
I’ve seen it a million times. Don’t fall for it. The principle, and even the plan may be true- but like i said, it’ll be so far away that YOU won’t even remember it.
I’ve been following this stuff since the late 80’s. I’ve yet to see one of these things come to pass- either at all- or within a decade of when it was “discovered”. Stuff i was hearing in 1987 which they were hyping as going to happen in a year or a month, either NEVER happened, or did happen, but not until after 2001.
We can often learn from the gist of what is said- but ignore the specifics- especially the dates.
“Every year” since I started following this stuff in ’87, was supposed to be the year “they impose Martial Law” – Yep- one’a these years it’s gonna happen alright- but in the meantime, more people are ignoring the fact that it is being SLOWLY imposed, little by little, because they gave up after being disappointed every year when the dire predictions failed to come to pass in that year.
The lesser “elite” already has control of the county I live in( bridges reinforced, local band -aid station updated , roads improved, now they are putting PV panels on large public buildings and get this the highest airport east of the Mississippi has been updated) ,with all the mtn passes and stuff the roads that pass through here you could seal this place off in two hours,the navy actually does a lot of stuff from this little airport , on top of said ridge one day I, looked down and seen a dude in heavy camo or a ghillie suit moving His position, (makes you wonder ) I think a lot of these modern Hippies that moved in and put up subsidized greenhouses are going to be surprised as to whom they will be working for some day.
For what its worth there is supposed to be a big event starting in December and a worldwide depopulation in 2050( man-made, don’t think I will have to worry about that one) so it goes, everyone has an Agenda and I think a lot of the Fruitbats and Hippies are just plain selfish.
Was looking at a lfew of the “solar powered electric systems this morning and Man they are costly( about a third of that new Heavy duty 4 dr Diesel pickup {these mid life crisis Guys with a bad comb over lust for.
Stop the World, I want to get off( different strokes for different Folks)
Sorry about the lack of paragraph delineation, this keyboard actually screws Me up a bit, (couldn’t find the edit feature ) Have to start skipping lines I suppose and remember to indent .( sometimes I get carried away with the “Tinfoil Hat ” stuff, gotta watch those sneaky critters though )
I guess I didn’t state that very well. The DOD has plans for a solar-storm-based blackout drill coordinated on those dates with Antifa protests.
Ooopps! You’re right 8. That’s what I heard too.
Ironically, when things really do happen….that’s using when they do happen- during a drill or simulation- just like 9-11.
Hi Eight,
Got backlogged; just catching up now… I am going to look into this one right now. Hat tip, amigo!
eric, this ties into the “event” we had two years ago in Tx. The feds were trying to find out how much negativity a military attack event would get.
I listened on the radio(so busy back then I didn’t log with the bye given construction companies)and so many people they repeated were fine with it. OTOH, there was a lot of negativity that wasn’t publicized. It wasn’t popular at all in the area Scalia “died”.
The scuttlebutt wagon travels slower than hyped tv but it does travel.
I was incensed by it but found few people even knew about it, the best way to pull something off like that.
I was all over the area day and night at the time where the troop deployment by air was to be mainly located(who knows the truth though). I kept thinking it would be my luck to run into/over one and be even more unpopular. I have a feeling the air drops were not as prolific as they first said. Can’t imagine anything good coming of being dropped in big oil leases and never heard anything about townspeople seeing anyone. I saw a lot of vehicles that didn’t blend in at the time. Don’t know what they really did but it wasn’t like in the SE where one was killed by a scared citizen. I think they were paranoid that everybody having a gun in Texas was true.
Get people scared and lead or jacketed bullets could fly ( there are some amazingly powerful “elephant guns ” out there .
I live in Coos bay , Oregon and there is a small town about 20 miles south of me that has a Tesla charging station with about 8 chargers I am completely baffled as to why it’s there and how many times it is used every month , I have a feeling the tax taxpayers paid for it .
Hi Kent,
They did – and eventually, the “free” electricity won’t be free, either…
Kent, It’s there in case a Californian decides to venture forth, looking for a new place in which to spread his horsesh…errr….Californian socialism. Wouldn’t want him to get stranded and not make it back to SF in time for Freaky Fag Festival, would ya?
Clover,
Only you could make this into a racial thing.
Label, diminish and close the comment trail. The acts of a coward. Perhaps you could look up the beginnings of these laws and enlighten yourself. I am not alone, there is documented history. I’m sure that it bothers your privileged white ass.. The law I selected was put in place more recently but the trail head is where I pointed.
Have a nice day!
Clover,
“My privileged white ass” was arrested and charged with “felony production of a controlled substance, with intent to distribute”… for growing some plants.
Unless you have also faced a felony prosecution and prison time for something similar, don’t preach to me about “privileged” anything.
You’re a troll. An Internet nobody.
A coward? My name goes on what I write. My address is published. I am not hiding behind anything.
I have the balls to write about things that could threaten my livelihood – and more.
Who are you, exactly?
Yeah. Exactly.
Regardless of what the “origins” of drug prohibition may have been (and that it was a racial thing is probably only a “fact” of revisionist history), it certainly has no bearing on things now, anymore so than does the fact that the income tax’s origin was intended to only affect the top 1% of “the rich”- but now applies to EVERYONE!
How about alcohol Prohibition of the 1920’s? Was that “racist” too?
The best revenge will be when this site goes mega… which it will. “Bob” will choke on his own vomit.
And Joe LaMuraglia, too.
Remember? “This is Bob…” The guy with the weird smile and a supposedly meaner wiener in the Enzite (sp.) commercial.
Might be the same guy and since they cut off his drugs he may be having issues or withdrawal.
Or the batteries won’t recharge in his… well, never mind.
Hi Doug,
“Bob” vamoosed.
I put him in the Libertarian camel clutch and made him hombel.
Yup it’s me bob… coward ! So let’s make this all about you and not about the millions of minorities that have been jailed for even less than cultivation.. My heart bleeds for you! NOT!
VPN every heard of it? DUH!
Clover,
I’m not the one hiding behind made-up names and VPNs, am I?
Your tiny tent will forever be tiny because of your need to feed your out sized ego! Dream on… Dumbass!
Clover,
You might at least try to be more clever with your invective – which you resort to because you’ve got no arguments to present.
You had no factual response to my points about electric cars not making economic or practical sense; I pointed out the fact that the examples of “new technology” you cited (e.g., VHS and cell phones) did not have to be force-fed or subsidized.
No answer.
Because you have none.
Instead, you call me an asshole and a nobody (which is funny, given your status).
And that, Clover, is why you are a Clover!
And you are trying to compensate for your tiny…..Never mind. When trying to argue against your clear intellectual superiors, you might want to pay closer attention to spelling, grammar, and syntax.
While I do not expect perfection, I do prefer that one has a sufficient grasp of the English language to support his own posturing. I see that you have brought precisely nothing to the table except for the regurgitation of stale environmentalist talking points and religious repetition of your misguided belief in Saint Elon and his imbecilic apostles.
That reply was to Bob/Knob/Whatever it refers to itself as, pardon my failure to address him/her directly.
Hi El Guapo!
“Bob” kept trying to post abuse – just name-calling; no factual rebuttals – via different IP addresses and so on. The mentality interests me. Like cancer is interesting to an oncologist, I suppose. It’s not that he disagreed with me; I enjoy a good debate – if the debate is premised on facts, on conceding them when presented.
Clovers never concede facts. They become sarcastic, resort to . . . name calling.
The virulence of the EV (and “climate change”) religions is striking. They have faith and proselytize – and get very much angered when the faith is questioned or criticized.
It doesn’t seem to register with them – the disconnect, I mean. That if – as they claim – EVs are so superior on economic and practical grounds to IC cars, how come it is necessary to force them down people’s throats? To legislate and regulate them into existence? Won’t people simply buy a superior product on their own?
Blankout.
Will most people or even large numbers of people tolerate having to wait a minimum of 30-45 minutes to put a partial charge back into a $30,000-$40,000 car that can’t travel half as far as $15k economy car?
What happens when – if – half or more of the cars in service are EVs and at any given moment a fourth of those cars need to recharge? Where is the infrastructure to support this? Who will pay for it? What about the gridlock that will ensue? What about the effect on the grid?
How is it economically viable for $30,000-up electric cars that have a service life of eight years or so to replace $15k cars that routinely last 15 years or more? Have millions of people suddenly got money enough to spend twice as much on a car? And spend it more often?
Etc.
Trump, with his “hard on crime” stance(so…..what else would a politician say? esp. a Republican)is threatening the states rights to grow pot even though long ago he chided the war on drugs. I’d welcome his federal war on the states(28 +DC). This could be the end of the fedgov and the beginnings of new liberty.
Everybody would remember, and some would learn, a 20 round mag was NEVER for deer hunting. I never carried an AR hunting except for varmints. It is the best rifle for varmint hunting IMO. I made that proclamation during the late 70’s. Since, I’ve heard it demonized and lionized and just last year, read a guy’s article where he proclaimed it the best varmint rifle to exist. I’d reckon he sees the class of varmints to include the two-legged sort.
To be as clear as 190 proof grain alcohol about where I stand on this business: I am not opposed to electric cars at all. I am merely very skeptical about them, as far as their practicality and their economic sensibility.
Your words betray that stance and you publish them on the internet for all to see along with your conjecture and conspiracy theories above. You are a nothing to them…
If technology stopped at lead acid you might have a case but I suspect that you will be very surprised at the capacity of the next battery. The research is pointing to a doubling of capacity and a halving of charge time.. It won’t be long before you can drive 400 miles and charge meaningfully in 15 minutes..
Good luck with your rant! Perhaps your could make friends with a “Kulivornia” latte drinker to borrow one?
The future is going to drive right over you..
Bob,
I cover this business honestly – unlike the rest of the press – which doesn’t (as a for-instance) take note of the fact that the Tesla’s much-touted range is dramatically reduced if the performance that is also touted is used; in other words, if you are not “hypermiling” it. If you have to drive a $40,000 car at the pace of an ’80 Chevette to realize the touted range, what’s the point, exactly?
And what is the point, generally?
These cars cost far too much for them to make any economic sense.
They have serious functional deficits (range and recharge).
Etc. Etc.
I merely point these facts out – and marvel at the blowjob media’s refusal to do the same.
Perhaps you are unaware of the way in which all new technology arrives.. Did you buy a beta max or vhs when they first arrived? And what would that have cost in relation to the median income at the time? And cell phones.. Remember car (cell) phones? Just who could afford them at the time? Buffy pass me the phone would you darling.
It all works the same. Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the facts instead of ignorant conjecture..
Clover, you make it so easy!
Did the government have to pass mandates to force VHS onto the market? Sales quotas and subsidies for cell phones? No.They were purchased freely, at market prices, by people who felt they were worth the money. The technology got better and cheaper naturally.
EVs, meanwhile, have been sideshow freaks for 100-plus years because they cannot (so far) compete on the merits – economically or practically. Tesla’s entire business model depends on subsidies and forced-buys of his product via carbon credits and production/sales quotas. Facts. Not “conjecture.”
It’s you who seem unable to grok “how new technology arrives.” It arrives when it works. When it makes sense. When people are willing to spend their money on it – and without the item requiring massive subsidies and other such “help.”
Poor ol’ Clover…
Elon really ought to hire better quality trolls.
All those things were made on private development monies. Profits were reinvested in product development.
Today’s circle of taxpayers being forced to subsidize good ideas and all this federal reserve created “stimulus” robbing savers largely didn’t exist then.
Most of those corporations are shadows of their former selves today. No bailouts. RCA, Motorola, shadows and even Sony now is having some troubles here and there.
Ah, save your breath, Brent. Bob doesn’t get it, because he has no real knowledge of the subject. He argues based onc emotions which were created by sound-bytes, flaky agenda-driven TV show hosts and burnt-out ex-hippie professors who are pushing an agenda,. An agenda which is outcome based- with the outcome being whatever social control the collectivists want to push- rather than on real knowledge, facts, and efficacy in achieving what is claimed.
This is the way women argue. Now it has spread to the feminized men.
Yeah I know. That’s why I didn’t reply to anything else. (I read the comments from newest until the last time I checked in) The way people like that can hold opposing beliefs in their head at the same time never ceases to amaze me.
“Why Won’t They Send me a Tesla to Test Drive?”
Let me guess.. Because you are a luddite asshole that can’t see the future through the forest of buggy whips.. perhaps? Your comments that electric cars will all be the same, boring and useless. You are obviously biased and your comments are out there for all to see, so why would they bother with a Podunk such as yourself? Gas is the only vroom vroom way to drive.. cough cough cough! Your myopic view of the future is shared by you and your little band of dim wits only. The rest of us realize that 9 billion people driving petrol cars will not only kill us quicker but make large swaths of the earth submerge.
A little thought experiment. When your glass of iced water still has ice in it what temperature is the surface water? What is the surface temperature once the ice is gone? See anything there or are you stuck in your cage of ignorance? Electric is where we are going and critical mass is developing. Every car manufacturer is getting into the game. Will you be the last holdout for petrol?
Ok “Sponge” Bob, since you are so enlightened, please tell us “luddites” why they don’t send one “just to prove Mr. Peters wrong?
You and your fake Agenda 21 buddies have been wrong about everything you predicted thus far.
New York city is not under water and neither are any of the other places that were suppose to submerge.
Global Climate change (had to change the name, right?) will be an ongoing process man or no man.
The only buggy whips being used are, by the likes of your madam, on you, when your are dressed up in your black silk stockings and wearing that kinky mask.
I have no idea what “Agenda 21” is and I don’t care since it is coming from the swamp of BS that you wallow within. He’s a nobody, why would they bother? All they have to do is type in his url for proof..
Doofusses such as yourself with your ad hominem attacks aren’t very useful to a bleeding edge tech company. Who’s opinion would they be changing? A bunch of hill jacks with two pennies to rub together and only a few more teeth in their mouths? You aren’t their target audience. I wouldn’t even know about this site if I hadn’t stumbled upon it by way of being curious about a link some hill jack posted with a dumb statement. I suspect it is the same for the rest of the world.. Small mind city!
Well, Clover, you are spending an awful lot of energy critiquing this “nobody” … more insults, the last refuge of the fact-free.
It must be tough being a Clover!
Well, Clover, you ought to look into it.
Confessing that you”have no idea” what Agenda 21 is proves the point; that you have no basis for intelligently discussing the topic at hand. Imagine, if I said “I have no idea” how electric cars work and then proceeding to critique them.
Yes, exactly.
Poor ol’ Clover!
Bleeding edge tech company indeed. Bleeding taxpayers via got. force. Would I cough up my hard earned money if he offered me stock? Probably not but at least I’d have the choice.
According to some jackass who comes up with names I guess are supposed to denigrate(hill jacks, something I have never heard before)others and oblivious to Agenda 21. Must be drawing a govt. check.
You might check with Google and the CIA. I hear they’re doing everything they can to take over the internet. Maybe you can make a few dollars off them too, help offset what Frogface Elon takes outta your check….and Elon with appreciate it too, having more tax money to pilfer.
Hi Eight,
This troll got my back up. I have not much talked about my experience with the “war” on some drugs… but when he began to talk about my “privileged white ass,” I had to set him straight.
About that and several other things.
eric, I know what you mean. The war on some drugs has what may be the longest victim line ever. You, me, and untold amounts of people here have been directly affected if not indirectly by taxes, loss of liberty and trying to get those we care about out of jail or prison.
Bob was probably high on some inferior Colorado weed anyway.
Thanks, Eight.
I think we shut him down pretty well.
You’ve probably noticed these Clovers are all the same. They are name-callers, specializers in the non sequitur and half-truth; in evading relevant facts that contradict their feelings and beliefs.
I’d feel sorry for them, if it weren’t for the fact that their kind always resorts to force to back up their feelings. Of course, force by proxy. They are usually too cowardly to pick a fair fight.
eric, they remind me of taking congress to task for supporting Israel and your detractor has only one thing to say, “You’re anti-Semitic”. Come on guy, you can do better than that. Or do you really not know what it is Israel’s Zionist(and the US)are really doing? Kept your nose up Bill O’Reilly’s ass so long it’s affected your hearing too?
Exactly, Eight.
They resort to that because they cannot abide a factual criticism.
In this respect, it slays me that I am considered – by GM – some kind of Nazi because I advocate not categorizing people according to their race and so on…
Tesla doesn’t like bad reviews period. If you remember former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, was sued for libel by Tesla for merely pointing out that that the range was low and it took a long time to recharge the car.
They tied him up in court for years before it got tossed. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/05/top-gear-tesla-jeremy-clarkson
Hi Rich,
I never met Clarkson, but I like the guy. He strikes me as a kindred spirit. I think we’d get along.
The global warmists just push doomsday further out. I think I’ve lived through two maybe three of them now.
As to TM there’s now a fight between consumer reports and Tesla Motors. The cult of CR vs. the corporation where the customer is always wrong.
I can’t believe the shit TM gets away with. If Ford did what TM has done the media would roast them alive. It’s done so for less in the past. The entire Ford Pinto myth they created for instance.
Morning, Brent –
Amen to this:
“If Ford did what TM has done the media would roast them alive.”
I’ve been working as a car journalist since the early’90s – and you’re more than right – this is unprecedented. Whatever Musk says, they gog at. When he’s shown to be – at best – “optimistic” – they always give him a pass.
But I know why. The reason is the same as the one that makes them all kow-tow to PC orthodoxies: Social pressure and financial pressure. I can tell you and everyone here that every corporate newsroom is as thoroughly controlled as Pravda’s. I was there, I know. You are not specifically told what you must not say – and what you must – you just know.
There is no free press in America, except online. A few outliers and off-the-reservation types. Our voices are like those of a mouse in a hurricane.
It has gotten somewhat better in that a majority of people no longer even listen to the MSM. The problem is the free media can’t – yet – access more than small slices of the much larger pie.
But I have hope.
Well, Clover – the fact that you haven’t challenged any of the factual statements I’ve brought up with regard to electrics tells me you haven’t got much in the way of rebuttal… other than to call me names.
It’s typical of your sort.
Your “cough cough” comment is particularly amusing. New cars – and cars built since the ’90s – are 95-plus percent “clean” at the tailpipe, as regards the substances that make anyone “cough.” Most new cars qualify as Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles or at least, Super Ultra Low Emissions (SULEV) vehicles… these are the EPA’s own terms incidentally.
Poor ol’ Clover!
Bobby, How does electric solve the problem of pollution, climate change, etc.?
Is it because electricity, as far as you know, comes magically from wires?
It doesn’t by itself, it only reduces it by half. The rest of the picture is in renewables. The world never stands still only people do, you being just one of those anchors..
Have a nice day!
Clover,
Renewables are great in theory – not so much in practice. Ethanol, for instance, is a net loser as far as energy in and energy obtained. Which is why it has to be force-fed to people via government edicts.
All your comments so far are full of assertions.
Battery power will double – range will increase to 400 miles – and recharge times to 5 minutes or less.
Maybe. But so far, not actually.
In fact, the best-case range of the most expensive EVs is much less than that of an average $15k economy car.
In fact, it takes at least 30-45 minutes to instill a partial charge back into a new EV. That’s if you have access to a “fast” charger.”
In fact, all EVs currently on the market cost so much to buy that they have no economic merit.
Got any facts – rather than more insults – to counter?
Most electrical production, esp. for parts of the country that aren’t Texas, comes from coal, a mighty dirty source emitting so many bad chemicals into the atmosphere and ground water it would have been shut down by the EPA if the EPA wasn’t a spoof for big coal and the climate change crowd.
Natgas emits a bit of nothing other than CO2 and some carbon monoxide.
During my lifetime the most non-polluting source for energy has been some form of petroleum.
I spent yesterday hauling fill dirt(fresh dirt)to a spill location of a tanker of ethanol and hauling off the contaminated dirt. While I’m not big on dumping ethanol willy-nilly into the ground, the truth is, it’s not that bad. The alternative would have been to let it lie and dissipate into the atmosphere.
But EPA being EPA we had to spend thousands of gallons of diesel operating trucks, loaders, skid steers, track hoes and various other equipment to dig that dirt up to the depth it penetrated, hauling it to a landfill, and hauling new dirt to the holes left. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for absolutely no benefit. So it’s transferred to a landfill? As if that landfill won’t eventually leak? It might have made sense for some chemicals but ethanol is going to make it into the ground water one way or the other, via tail pipe or simple evaporation. There was a good aspect though, I was employed a day. Now I can make my requisite payments to the govt. so Elon can have more of my money.
I hear some place calling. Wonder what the boys in Brazil are doing.
Eight WTF ,I thought that was the beauty of ethanol, been up to me I would have burnt it off and let it lie( turn to vinegar won’t it?) that makes absolutely no freakin sense. as far as the battery Tor talked about,I don’t believe we will ever get a real fast charging battery the chemistry and physics involved , dey gonna be .some serious heat somewhere.
Eric ,I had my little trip to the “‘Governors school for the gifted” because of some “wacky tobaccy” guess my “white privilege “ran out too( best friends I had in there were Mexicans and poor Blacks) its no free ride.
I want an electric vehicle one day , because it would work for me ,I think we are always going to need Diesels for the long haul and a lot of the heavy lifting , sure electric will work for the heavy lifting , you have to have a dedicated High tension, with electrons produced some way .In a way I am kinda glad there will be more electric cars and whatnot, maybe heating oil and Diesel fuel wont get so expensive( I remember were diesel fuel(on road ) went when the boys were switching to diesel trucks ( personally I wouldn’t have one unless I was doing a lot of heavy hauling, GM makes a fine 6.0 gas engine that has more then enough power for my needs, really isn’t all that thirsty either{ that what the UPS BOX VANS have in them now-works for UPS, would work for me }I really wouldn’t want most Ford trucks, believe Me ,I have been around lots of them.
What I would like to see is the Clovers and Fruitbats leaving their imaginary high ground and walk a few clicks in the ‘working mans shoes ‘.
Kevin, been up to me if it had been crude oil “Well, we won’t have to mow that spot for awhile”. Cover it up with a little dirt like oil companies do and don’t report it. Crude oil is natural so the earth is constantly having crude oil cover it as does all sources of water. Gasoline, what the hell’s so bad about a load of gas? No weeds for a year and no fireants this year….or a few months.
As far as diesel pickups, it’s hard to go back to gas. It’s that low end that you love plus the fact the entire driveline is enhanced. Some companies(I won’t name names)even made their diesels quieter inside than the gas pickups and that’s a boon too.
You and I know there’s very little real world difference in fuel mileage with the large driveline components but over a million pickups made by each maker each year it satisfies the govt.
A friend was laughing the other day when he said his one ton dually crewcab 4WD Chevy got 11 mpg with the big workbed and stuff he has on it. Not so bad for what it is and considering my neighbors new 3/4T crewcab 4WD Chevy is gas and gets 9 mpg it’s not too bad. Both engines could get much better mileage without govt. interference and that’s where the rub really comes in. The big thing out here now is DEF/EGR delete kits…..selling like hotcakes on a cold day.
I had said I’d like better than 14(14.2 generally)mpg on my Z 71 driven at 80. He laughed and said that Toyota with the extra big crew cab still got the same 13 it always had and not at that speed and with a tiny bed and not a damned thing in it. Without EPA I’m guess Toy could do better too.
It’s all bullshit. Nuclear waste, yep I can see that. And that’s what the EPA does, costs everybody huge amounts of money. I’d swear it was invented by the lawyer’s guild.
Brother got a “cherry 1 ton Duramax and is seriuously looking at a EGR delete kit it would warm up on a pull and shut down to nothing, its a great truck, dont know his mileage, it would get around the other big Chevy He had was the 8100( Chevy dumbed down so they could get rid of the Big Block-I liked that I could better mileage then He driving the thing ) He traded that truck on a POS New Holland skid steer.It would get around 9 mpg (all 4 tons of it) It seems the Duramax is pretty consistent across the board mileage wise and its a shame it took a Japanese company to develop this engine,You knew Cummins was selling their(turnkey basically )EPA certified retrofit diesel now its a little 4 banger suited for jeeps and older smaller pickups . I have the oppurtunity to help clean up old leakey gas tank sites and no joke that is a problem , the old gas had benzine in it and thats what they were concerned about. And low level nuclear waste is really not the problem that we are led to believe,you know the French store the spent fuel rods under tiles in the foyer, a little of anything can be handled. Its a mess , the biggest problem is too many people .
I’ll tell you what else the French do, along with Britain and Germany, they poison hell out of the ocean. Some genius said if it went down a pipe into the ground it was ok….so they have these sites that have a pipe that go down into the ground and then out into the bottom of the ocean where the radioactive levels are out of sight. They’re quite literally killing off the ocean, hence the earth. Water evaporates, takes poison with it and rains back down to cover the earth with radioactive waste. Yep, them Frenchies and Brits and Germans toe the line on getting rid of their wastes…..and you wonder why anti-nuke groups are made to seem so radical.
If the public only knew…..and if they only knew about Fukushima…….I hung my head, II hung my head…..And they woulda hung their heads but they know it’s a lie.
Nuclear wastes and the inability to dispose of them without destroying the earth goes back to the biggest con in the world and those who support it have the same mantra all the shell gamers have ever had, never drop the con.
nah. forget all that Limbaugh bullshit ( actually spot on sometimes) the French have probably the best healthcare on the planety (maybe they need it if what you say is true ) the trouble with the B&W andGE reactors is that they use the system that Hyman Rickover promoted ( if you dont know who H Rickover is , check your military history ) like Strangelove I grew to love Nukes after I did a little research.We live in a radioactive world, scared of nukes, dont have a smoke detector and please dont eat Bananas( that ol K-40 will get you ) everything in moderation.
At gas station with a leaking underground storage tank (LUST site) they typically check for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene (BTEX a.k.a. gasoline), sometimes MTBE (alternative to ethanol as fuel oxygenate) and waste oil (if they had a buried waste oil storage tank). The analytical package for diesel fuel is OA-2 (never bothered to find out what that stands for or the chemical composition of diesel fuel)
The primary concern is leaching to groundwater and proximity of water supply wells. Supposedly (I’ve never seen it) there have been instances of spilled gasoline getting into water supply lines through some defect or, if concentrations are high enough, gasoline will ‘melt’ PVC (have seen that many times). Some municipalities use PVC supply lines off of the mains…
Occasionally gas vapors from a spill will end up in someones basement, with the associated potential health hazards and explosion risk (never seen one with high enough concentration to be explosive – you will smell it way before there is enough to combust).
As I understand the rules (I’m no expert), the nutshell version is that they want to keep stuff out of the drinking water.
From a station owners perspective I would want to be leak free because I would rather sell my gas than let it go to waste in the ground ($$$). Not to mention the possible hassle with regulatory agencies if there is a problem.
Even though I have PVC to my house it’s not approved for drinking water. OTOH, I have PEX in the cattle pens, go figure. I have replaced a lot of supply to my house with PEX but not all.
A couple years ago we dug up the slab of an old car dealership and hauled it away. They had a pit(40’s to 80’s)where they drained oil. It was just a French drain. As soon as we discovered it we hauled the timbers away and filled it with dirt. No water wells near it so no harm I’d guess. As long as it had been abandoned it didn’t make much sense to panic at the time. I couldn’t being to tell you how many oil spills I’ve seen on pipelines that were contained, buried and covered in record time. I know what a roadgrader, dozer and a couple backhoes and vacuum trucks indicate.
I don’t blame them for doing a hasty coverup. The cost of a site investigation/remediation project can be quite high, esp. when some seem to get preferential treatment (slap on the wrist – look the other way) while others get the opposite (unreasonable punitive $$$).
I used to work for some critters who thought it was alright to let a barrel of used oil into the ground( the youngest espoused that since crude oil came from the groundit was alright to dump the used oil back into the ground ( a US barrel actually when I changed the transmission oil on a D-8- was at odds to the company owners, they finally got a waste oil heater and it took care of the disposal problem.
The good ol’ boys from Tennessee told me the Benzine ( carcingenic as hel) was what the EPA was worried about{I thought it was the Tetraethyl Lead} you sure could smell the shit when you dug the tanks up , the one I helped do had gas seeping into the well .
Years ago here in the mines, we’d put waste oil or contaminated diesel on the ground somewhere in the pit and just pick it up on the next bench to run through the mill. No harm, no foul – it floated off along with the copper and got burned in the smelter.
Now it’s been found that the waste oil is an excellent substitute for diesel in production of ANFO explosive, and you guessed it – the greenies have an issue with it.
The same people that think 7200 volt AC shovels run on fairy dust and rainbows think that “heavy metals” are somehow going to contaminate rock being processed to extract “heavy metals”. Stupidity knows no bounds. I wonder if Tesla is going to come up with a replacement for 300 ton haul trucks that runs on a few thousand AAA batteries? The companies that scream about a 10 hour PM on the Cat trucks every couple of months are going to love the 6 weeks of downtime to recharge the batteries after every load.
Hi bshand,
“Bob” is our newest Clover!
I just mowed him…
Toshiba developing EV battery with 320-km range that can be recharged in 6 minutes
https://drivemag.com/news/toshiba-developing-ev-battery-with-320-km-range-that-can-be-recharged-in-6-minutes
Shell says it will start installing electric vehicle chargers at its gas stations this year
https://electrek.co/2017/02/01/shell-electric-vehicle-chargers-gas-stations/
What you need to know before buying solar power ahead of Trump’s tariff decision
https://electrek.co/2017/10/27/buying-solar-power-trumps-tariff-decision/
And while people are there waiting for the car to charge they can buy the marked up products inside.
Seems to me they should send you TWO of these. One to use whilst the other is charging.
After all those who can afford one, should be able to buy two… One to drive to work, sit on the charger and the other to drive home, sit on the charger overnight; in a continual process.
There, fixed it!
If these were the fad, the power transmission lines would likely go from black to glowing orange methinks.
Doug, power lines would simply be doubled, direct current. That worked out so well. When you wrote two of them, I figured it was one to shit on and the other to cover it up with.
The unseen costs of going all electric:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4764208/Child-miners-aged-four-living-hell-Earth.html#ixzz4wKGCK0jO
That’s not all of it either. I’ve seen vids of the country and how it’s polluted and the people with sores stemming from the pollution. It’s a ghastly scene.
Who makes that shit up? That’s even wilder than the “children workibg in sweatshops in China for pennies a day” or “Child sex slaves in [pick backwood hillbilly state of choice]”…..
In North Korea, they probably tell their people “In AMerica they arrest parents for letting their kids play outside”. Oh…wait…that one’s true!
Asian Carpe Diem Carp Attack (Can American Fish and Fishermen compete?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InENM6fwIwE
Watched a Guy fix one on a grill( said it wasn’t bad and there is no shortage of them ) Perhaps catch a few and feed them in clear water to improve the taste( works for catfish)
Strange thing Eric you see a Tesla or two around here and its just as remote as you are, any car burns through its ” juice” fast, that Clarkson fellow ran a Tesla out of charge on a racetrack( older tech too) by running it wide open, nobody mentions a Hellcat will run out of gas wide open in 75 miles( I believe it is) Heck if we get the ever elusive good battery ( pie in the sky for now) ICE cars won’t stand a chance(price got to come down too – without subsidies, that is something the “Fruitbats and Greenies” wont own)
Heck I would love a good electric lawn tractor, the ones that will run a couple of hours cost an arm and a leg( no subsidies there) So it boils down to this , each has its own merits and where the Hell is the Elio?
At least Musk has a product on the market , it seems the only thing that Al Gore has produced is”Hot air”( and He bitches about the warming trend ?)
Hi Kevin,
Sure, you could probably run a Hellcat to empty in 100 miles or less – but it can be refueled in 5 minutes.
The goats gulch logo cost 20 bucks worth of bitcoin. How much would you charge to paint and post a directional sign on your land pointed South West that said “Only 1600 Miles To Goats Gulch”
The gulch could probably reciprocate with a 42 foot high giant billboard “No Clover” sign with EPAUTOS.COM on it if desired in addition to the payment.
Culberson County Texas Billboards Along Interstate 10
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/10/10/owners-way-billboards-along-state-highways-will-rise-control
Perhaps a Grits For Breakfast Billboard could be created as well.
https://foodimentaryguy.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/9-2-grits-for-breakfast.jpg
GFB Texas Reefer Reform Bill
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2016/11/bills-frame-texas-2017-marijuana-reform.html
Tor, Texas struggles along, gimped by ignorance but mainly greed of the Just Us crew. It probably won’t surprise you to know some of the most vocal opponents are bail bondsmen, those paradigms of morality.
But they can blow smoke up somebody else’s ass when it comes to “legalization”. Decriminalization is the only answer. So, where does one get the “one ounce or less” of pot? Somebody have a once ounce or less plant?….and even that doesn’t pass since it’s production, not possession. I recall 50 years ago when a friend’s dad who was a general practitioner described pot as being a mild analgesic. He was an old country doctor, no dog in the hunt, just plain common sense less hype of any sort. It’s a vile society that denies anyone, anything.
“Prison is for rapists, thieves and murderers. If you lock up someone for smoking a plant that makes them happy, You’re the fucking criminal!”
Joe Rogan
Hi QueeQueg,
Exactly. If you haven’t harmed anyone else – or their property – go in peace. Such a simple idea. But one that most people still reject.
Apparently you aren’t aware of the racist beginnings of these drug laws. Opium the Asians.. Pot the native Americans and Mexicans..
Got to keep the less superior where they and their drugs belong.. White power!
Hi Bob,
The “war” on some drugs doesn’t discriminate, Bob. Trust me. I can vouch for this – from very personal experience.
Are you a black man with rock cocaine or a white man with powdered coke? I rest my case..
Clover,
Only you could make this into a racial thing.
Bobbo,
Where I live, since there are few knee-grows (or whatever the politically-correct term of the hour is today) 98% of the drugs arrests and imprisonments are of white people- be it for meth, pills, marry-jew-wanna, etc.
…so I’m having a little problem seeing the “racial” aspect of what you say. Maybe we should import some jigs so we can have racial equality among victims of victims of government oppression?
Hi Nunz,
I shut the prick down, I think. I do not like dragging out my own experiences with the “drug war,” but his virtue-signaling bullshit gave me little choice.
I’m sorry to hear that you were a victim, Eric. Errrr, I mean “A terrible criminal, for growing a plant which some men decided that you should not grow/God should have not created….so a few of ’em got together and wrote it down and signed it, and now it gives them the “right” to cage you; take your property; and inflict violence upon you…)
This world is so insane, I understand why people need drugs! (And ones much harder than marry-jew-wanna!)
I do hate to see censorship enacted- but I understand. This is “our bar” (Well, yours…) and I guess debating with one person is really not going to accomplish anything, especially when that person is very ignorant and does not even possess a basic understanding of the facts and principles upon which his own cause is based. He really just makes our life miserable, while accomplishing nothing.
Bon is a perfect example of the average American today. There “facts” and positions are based on half-truths and feel-good pie-in-the-sky “what might be” or “What they say”….while they in-fact know nothing of substance, but are just zealous for a myth.
What’s the betting that Elon will end up with the Trabant (http://godevfx.com/trabant) solution to cold weather.
A nice little self contained Kerosene heater in the the cabin.
Back in the 80’s when we had “trickle down” economy or as GHW Bush called it before he realized who was benefiting, “Voodoo Economics”, we had out of sight fuel costs. Gas, electricity, diesel, you name it so, because mainly it was an unknown quantity and because it was actually $1 fuel, we briefly had a spate of Kerosene heaters. I personally, only knew one family who lost their lives over them but lots of us tried to reduce costs with “kerosene” and of course, the oil companies took #1 fuel to heights never imagined. Quite honestly, before that it had been dirt cheap, $.25/gallon.
Hi 8, I did the same thing in the early ’90s! I was fresh out of the army and still a sheeperson at that time, and I had moved into a rental single wide mobile home in Hephzibah, Ga. which neighbors Augusta, Ga . The furnace was all electric and I nearly shit my pants when I got the first winter monthly electric bill which nearly equaled my rent payment, and the landlord did not care at all about that cost to me! I immediately bought a kerosene wick heater to heat the place instead. I quickly discovered that windows had to be partially open for the smoke to escape from it. I was so unhappy with the results that I moved to downtown Augusta where I had access to natural gas heat. This was a town ran by republicans, and even the newspaper was a republican based one; yet I quite often heard automatic gun fire at nights because I lived very near to the bad part of the town. For you who do not know: Augusta and Hephzibah borders Fort Gordan.I have little doubt that those automatic firearms had been stolen from the base or smuggled out of it. I left the state in 1994, but I do wonder whether or not things have changed there since then. It is almost certain that my former despicable landlord Lawrence James is dead now.
Brian, I made about $300 take home pay then so it was a shock with $250 rent having a $350 electric bill. The house was an old ranch house, no insulation and the curtains waved in the northern breeze plus we had global cooling going then(You could have convinced me, some of the worst winters on record). I cut enough wood to heat the outdoors, the only way we could heat the indoors. It was so nice to go to cheap propane after that. That reminds me, I gotta order some propane but not that much. Last winter we used half as much as the winter before.
I used to truck to Georgia quite a bit. There was something about it….or maybe everything about it, but I was never tempted to live there. Of course I wasn’t tempted to live most other places with the deep south high on the list. Not sure why yankees seem to equate Tx. to the south and try to give us southern accents on tv and movies. The southern bs they speak leaves Texans going “what did he say?”. Boston breathers have more in common with Alabama. Hell, if we’d liked it that much we’d still be there since that(and Scotland) are mostly where we’re from.(Welsh other side).
Spot on Eric…..for now.I truly believe an electric,fast charge,long range will be a reality,but it sure isnt now.
But it is coming,we will see it.Now can we ever afford it? Thats the elephant in the room IMO,not the tech,the costs the feds will make it.
“The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.”
Only in the land of morons, America.
The saying is :”The proof of the pudding is in the eating”
There now, makes sense doesn’t it.
It would make sense if you’re talking about some pudding you bunch of bit of Bailey’s Irish Cream into.
Although that proves another moronity.
Why is nearly all American liquor from the UK or elsewhere?
Are we incapable of making our own liqueurs, vodkas, and other high end intoxicants?
Are we that drunk on imports Amoricons?
Answer me if you can still read English, and not only Amero Ebonics.
As the Japanese always say: What do you call an American with a PhD in physics and an MD in cardiology?
Stupid American.
What are you talking about Tor? America has bourbon literally coming out of our ears. Moonshine, vodka, gin, rum, liqueurs, all kinds of booze is distilled here. The only imported liquor I buy is single malt scotch.
“I would test the Tesla’s vaunted quickness repeatedly – to see what the effect would be on the battery pack’s charge, as this affects range.
I would want to know whether the range is reduced appreciably by sustained high-speed driving.”
I can tell you that based on some rough, but fairly accurate calculations I did the other year based on someone’s usage at a 1/4 mile drag strip that the P90D will yield around 7 miles in total at full throttle before the battery needs to be charged with it’s standard battery pack. (“discharged” is not at “zero” incidentally for battery life reasons)
That also assumes ideal conditions(temperature wise), no climate control, etc.
You can adjust accordingly for high speed driving versus full throttle…but you won’t hear any of the hipsters that have ponied up for a Tesla volunteering what their range is driving at 80mph in overly hot or cold weather…
If gov’t regs allowed for a short commute electric vehicles I think it could be a viable model(no airbags, 5mph bumpers, etc. et al), priced accordingly- say $10k or so, basically an well designed golf cart with road legality. But, like many other areas of economics our government will not allow such a thing and instead we get “neighborhood vehicles” and the like…neutered crap…or the opposite end, these taxpayer subsidized play toys(Tesla) for rich hipsters that have dubious market value in practical terms(outside of self righteous hipsters).
The technology is not there for sensible long haul commuting, traveling, etc., especially when compared to fossil fuels which are excellent for said usage.
Fall below critical charge level for LiIon and the battery is kaput. Life is not just harmed, it’s ended.
Maybe car batteries are different, hasn’t seemed to hurt my Ryobis and I use the heck out of them One good thing about the Li-Ion batteries they will hold the charge a long time.Ni-Cads are a no no , they die pretty quick and won’t hold a charge long.The NiMh batteries seem to be the most durable in my experience.
Your tool packs have a built in BMS Battery Management
System that cuts the battery off before it is fully discharged. If you were able to run them down below 3 volts per cell they would be toast. That’s why Tesla limits the battery packs to only using 85% of full capacity.
Li-Ion battery service life is also determined by severity of usage. My Dewalt cordless drill at the house has had the same two batteries for 3 years now and they work fine. My ½” cordless impact (Dewalt 20v) at work has been through 3 different sets of 2 in the same three year span. Is it a defect in the battery? No. It is rattling big sockets (up to 1¼”) with a fairly strong motor in a really nasty environment.
A proper BMS is required for LiIon. This prevents you from draining them below the critical charge level. Which functions are in the battery vs. the tool depend on how it was designed, but it’s there somewhere. The first TM product Mr. Musk didn’t know and didn’t hire anyone who did so cars that were parked too long ended up as bricks from the small draw that’s always there. The batteries went below critical charge levels.
I’ve had good luck with Ni-Cad in cordless tools. NiMh too. LiIon I’ve seen too many crap out in the tools at work.
A buddy of mine has a 2014 Electric Nissan Leaf. It does accelerate on the Interstate in a reasonably fast manner and it is limited to about 80 miles between charges. He charges it on a 220V line as the local power company will not utilize 440 lines at the present time at his house.
The point is it is a second car used almost exclusively for in-town driving.
The AC can be left on with little effect on range in the summer and it does work.
China is going all electric. I suspect though they also have a vehicle that is a hybrid diesel vehicle with a range of about 700 miles between fill-ups.
Current models here on the US market that are all electric are restricted to about 125 miles per charge give or take.
The big IF is if you buy used will the battery still be any good. Depreciation is horrible on the leaf and I suspect on the Tesla vehicles in as little as 5 years the vehicle will probably be worth about 5 grand.
Currently a new battery system is likely to be about 6 grand new and about 2 grand used.
The back side is most electrics require very little maintenance and do not need oil changes every 3,000 to 5,000 miles to the tune of about 20-30 dollars per oil change. Electric motors do need periodic changes in the brushes.
They need no antifreeze in the engine. Neither do they need periodic tuneups. Not sure about transmission troubles to the tune of about 3500 dollars which modern gasoline cars are likely to have if you drive in the snow. Especially if you reverse gears back and forward to get out of a snow and ice problem. The older rear transmissions were a lot harder to kill than the newer front wheel drive transmissions.
With that in mind, throw money in the bank each week to replace the car or the batteries down the road.
The joke is that they basically used many C cell rechargeable batteries on the original Prius electric.
The other problem is people in heavy overloaded vehicles parking on your tail at 75 mph on roads that are rain covered or slick. How much metal do you want around you when one of these jokers rear ends you? What kind of bumper does the car have and how much does it take to total the car along with the people within it.
Cops do not often give out tickets to people sitting on your back bumper. I wish they did. I want them off the road.
When they do that hit the horn hard and put the brake light on at the same time as you gently push on the accelerator pedal. The usual offender is in a Ford Truck. Don’t know why they prefer F150s but they do. The biggest argument against these electric cars is you have no real protection against idiots on the road.
If a new battery pack was only 6K it would be a great bargain. It’s probably 5 times that.
If people park on your tail it means you’re going too slow, holding everybody up. Doesn’t make a shit what the PSL might be. Stay with the flow. Hard to understand why you Don’t understand. People are parked on your ass because you’re in the way of the flow, it ain’t that hard goddamnit. The fact the the F 150 is the cheapest pickup you can buy is why so many of them exists along with that Ford driver aspect I can’t account for. For the most part I don’t have a choice of speed and it seems like the smaller the car, the more willing the driver to do stupid shit in a bunch of trucks, like today in construction on I-20. Forest’s mother was right, stupid is as stupid does. No F 150’s were going barely faster in the lane that signs had warned for 1.5 M that would end. The idiots in the little cars could have blasted down there and pulled over and the truckers could easily have adjusted to it but NO, they had to barely beat the trucks, who were slowing down, and then create these situations that are nothing but stupid and dangerous. Yep, I was one of those truckers out there.
I was in a really powerful tractor with no trailer and could easily have kept these fools to the left lane to die in the cones but that’s not what they’d have done and taken some trucker who couldn’t accelerate like me with them into “wreck land”, just cause they wanted to be “ahead” of the trucks they could see…..only there were plenty more trucks they couldn’t see. And why, do tiny cars want a truck behind them? That’s not really the safest place to be. Believe me, the people who cuss trucks are certainly be cussed by truckers. They try to race past us…. but they’re too chickenshit to really go much faster…..might get a ticket so they do really stupid shit. And then when everybody, cue I-10 west bound out of Houston, is doing 80-85 at least and most more than that, truckers try to do their best in the slow lane and that’s not good enough for clover. Later in the day it was SOOO nice to be on two lane roads with not much but trucks and people in pickups who know to not pull right out in front of you.
Anyone driving an electric douche canoe is the idiot on the road.
Only an autistic savage gives deference to paint on a road and word rectangles on a metal stick.
Open your windows and start looking people in the eye for a change.
Mein gott you’re a bunch of Autistic North Koreans these days.
Know your surroundings, your self, and your fellow abductees. Learn to sail around your soul.
The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul (works for both globular and pancake flat souls)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRQGZUKS2Y
“The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul”
The man who sailed around his soul
From East to West, from pole to pole
With ego as his drunken captain
Greed, the mutineer, had trapped all reason in the hold
The man who walked across his heart
Who took no compass, guide or chart
To rope and tar his blood congealed
When he found his self revealed ugly and cold
And the sirens that sing
By your nose with its ring
They’ll drag you in
For your sins
Now he sits all alone
And it’s no place like home
It’s empty skin
A bag to keep life’s souvenirs in
The man who sailed around his soul
The man who sailed around his soul
The man who sailed around his soul
Came back again to find a hole
Where once he thought compassion and the truth
Had laid to warm his freezing carcass on return
The man who walked across his heart
Was doomed to journey from the start
Of every love affair he’d broken
All the lies he’d ever spoken
Tattooed on his arm
And the jellyfish stings
Even angels with wings
Who look too deep
And dare to peep
Now he sits all alone
Knowing flesh blood and bone
Is everything
He found the treasure he’d been seeking
The man who sailed around his soul
/// //// ////
It is an ancient Mariner
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
Mayst hear the merry din.’
\\\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\\ \\\\
Eight, 26 over in Illinois can get someone 6 months in jail. A while back I had someone on my ass who wanted to 80 in a 45. On a surface street. Even in the right lanes of an interstate, same thing. It may sound cloverish, I won’t be going to jail for anyone. They can either wait for my pass to be completed or recognize I am in the right lane and go around on the left.
Be whatever kind of man you want. It’s your life. What good is the unseen approval of others on some quasi-anonymous forum?
I stopped seeking approval after the matriarch of our family died. That was my only earthly purpose. Having her complete approval. And I fulfilled that obligation in spades.
Really, this notion of men wanting approval of other men for who they are is rather inconceivable to me. I understand wanting to be liked or have my writings responded to here. But I was measured long ago after my first mission and found wanting.
I fulfilled my first purpose. But wasn’t asked for a second purpose. Probably because I now had a terrifying power no one else at the time had, even though I was not qualified to have it, if you looked at the available alternatives.
Do you think Elon Musk for example is worried about what any of us think and say about him. We’re just some sniping critters a hundred miles in the distance to him, and nothing more.
“Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own—
they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal— for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.
They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them—while you’d give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them.
They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don’t know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear.”
Oh, Dagney where art thou? Love of my life is calling ( calling me bad names, how simple life would be for Her, If I would pass like the “Gambler”)
Octo fellow from Austrialis,I have a problem with the Female Bus Driving Clovers,I was coming down the road one day( might have been in the “Month of May”) saw a bus way down the road started slowing down( weak truck didn’t want to stop) school bus lights on, she let kids off, geared down still a good ways away waited for her to cut lights off and get going she sat there lights on ,I slowed more finally after a good while I came abreast of yellowish bus ,stopped looked at the bus driver ( she was a flapping her gums, with a clover glare) I guess she was saying “you will stop or else”. The only thing worse then a woman on a power trip is a “clover” on a power trip . Those Jackass drivers that hold traffic up to let a bus out in front of a stream of traffic or a loaded truck , really need to think about the potential disaster in the making.
When I drop this “robe of CDL” there will be rejoicing in Heaven.
Actually she was likely still being quite obedient to a man, just not you. But what she saw as the alpha man, in this situation.
Modern Western women are loyal to authority, not to reality in most cases.
Women have an unseen Matriarchy they serve. This Matriarchy, is whoever is seen as the highest authority is obeyed, even unto death.
You’re imagining she still in a Patriarchy. Where women would serve the highest principle. In this case, taking action that would best serve the most members of a society.
That’s how women all were before all this granting of the vote. And womens temperance movements, and all the rest.
The perversion of one of their primal natures which serve both themselves and society is one of the cornerstone PTB – Powers That Be.
THEY have made her this way. They are the unseen men and women of true importance, behind what can be seen.
Allright, Tor. You quoted enough Rand to make me fall asleep and bonk my head on the desk. I would write you a ticket for it if I wasn’t so drowsy.
I hears ya. But..
Stealin her mojo is more like it. Ayn and Zed are both dead. Its our gulch now.
She was mostly parroting her excellent european education in philosophy anyway. She never claimed to be an innvoator or owner of her ideas.
She fleshed her philosophy out only enough to write screen plays and a few hundred pound wall of text novels.
Whos gulch our gulch
No more Randy Ann wallflowers in Goldwaters Attic
Now we’re out among the thorns and the sage
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzI5ZjIzMGItMjAwMy00MzUyLThjOWQtZWRlYWQwY2U0ZjAyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTcyNTg3Nzc@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,666,1000_AL_.jpg
If only Heather Graham was really going to be there. There’s a Felina type Femme Fatale to die for.
El Paso Freezone – Where I fell in love with a Stateless AnCap Texican Girl
EL PASO, ( duelo) con Polo de los Apson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sv_ewlZhWg
El ultimo beso _
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNlCd3oi5X0
Spanglo EnglaTierraElFuego
Look out there a new maquiladora da explorer yiddish a brewing in the Rio Gulchlands.
Brent, obviously I’m not referring to “a” tailgater. When you’re frequently being tailgated it should be a sign to you.
Yeah, /// keep rights move overs all you Chi Clovers///
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8HIQyHYQ-gs/Tb9tvoYtAAI/AAAAAAAAFHM/wr5wQeEn4Z4/s1600/chicago-river-alligator-miss-universe-chinese-traffic-jam.jpg
I’m southbound and down loaded up and trucking I’ve gotta deliver this reefer of vital fluids and supplies to Puerto Rico because I made a gentlemans wager with a Smokey and a Bandit.
I am frequently tailgated. But I have to be concerned about being nailed by the local revenuers and do the PSL. One of the places I am often tailgated is nearing the police station of a town who’s cops will ticket for less than 5 over. They set up in the station’s driveway or on the side street across the street frequently enough.
These people voted for these speed limits, I don’t want to drive them, but well, I drive cars that will get me selected.
You are so very right 8!!!!!!! A great but unknown to me percentage of 4 wheeler drivers are very moronic! Those idiots constantly cram themselves in front of trucks at nearly every urban highway exit!
I see the same shit with Ford drivers in Australia. 20 -40 km below the speed limit, and wig wagging all over the lane. Burnt out lights. Rust pockets and dented body panels everywhere. Fading paint. What is it with Ford cars that seem to attract the dregs of society, and people who just cannot drive with any skill?
Uncle will throw me in jail if I drive my electric golf cart to the beer store. But pay me thousands in tax breaks if I buy a stupid tesla.
Some communities are golf cart “friendly”, the chaos is everywhere, build a road and they will come,( the quandary is” every road built to ease congestion, is soon conjested”
If only the builders would pave the 80 miles of the Darien Gap and bridge the 50 miles over the waters of the Bering Sea Crossing, (no deeper than 180 feet.)
Then the world’s chaos could really be tamed, and United Staters could drive to South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Imagine a one world global Autobahn with no speed or other limits of any kind. Zoom Zoom Zoom.
A World Wide Web of Interconnected Earthwide Expressways.
Good idea. Maybe then I could get a job painting the Bering bridge. It might get a little cold, but at least it would be a job, y’know. I mean, they keep saying indins came across on the Bering bridge, innit.
Its not the “the proof is in the pudding.” Its “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
Holy pedantic posts, Batman!
Richard III cried for a horse! a Horse!
Hell, I’d just like a copy editor…
He’s not even right, you don’t need an editor in this case. And either way, libertarians not authoritarians here. We decide ourselves what’s grammatical. You’ve rendered it in the way the vast majority does now.
They PTB love it when sayings morph into unintelligible newspeak like that, and so your rendering is correct.
The Origin Of ‘Proof Is In The Pudding’ – NPR
In a commentary this week on Morning Edition, Frank Deford said the “proof is in the pudding.” A listener wrote in to say that keeping proof in a pudding would be messy. The original proverb is: The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And what it meant was that you had to try out food to know whether it was good.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next, we have a correction of sorts, though it’s also a story of how language evolves. We’re following up on a phrase in a commentary by the sportswriter Frank Deford.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
FRANK DEFORD: Maybe it still stings the purists that Richard’s contrarian ways worked. The proof is in the pudding.
INSKEEP: The proof is in the pudding, he said. Tim Lowe wrote us all the way from Santiago de Cali, Colombia, and he writes the following: Frank, the proof is not in the pudding. It would be a messy, if not completely silly place to keep it. With that in mind, we called Ben Zimmer, language columnist at the Boston Globe.
BEN ZIMMER: Well, the proof is in the pudding is a new twist on a very old proverb. The original version is the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And what it meant was that you had to try out food in order to know whether it was good.
INSKEEP: Zimmer adds that the word pudding itself has changed. In Britain, dating back centuries, pudding meant more than a sweet dessert.
ZIMMER: Back then, pudding referred to a kind of sausage, filling the intestines of some animal with minced meat and other things – something you probably want to try out carefully since that kind of food could be rather treacherous.
INSKEEP: OK. So, over the years, the original proverb has evolved. The original was the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It was shortened to the proof of the pudding, and then here in America, it morphed again to the proof is in the pudding. Apparently, the proof of the listening is in the correcting.
INSKEEP: This is NPR News.
Definition of the proof is in the pudding – Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20proof%20is%20in%20the%20pudding
Correct, Rex. That particular misstatement is one of my pet peeves.
My biggest peeve, is when people pet their pets incorrectly. Here’s how to do it the right way…
15 charts illustrate how to properly pet your animals
https://img.memecdn.com/15-charts-that-perfectly-illustrate-how-to-properly-pet-animals_c_3193295.webp
No way, Tor. I know that I am nine different kinds of weird, but that’s a bridge too far even for me. I’ll pet my peeves, but I draw the line at peeving my pets.
For the last couple of years, a familiar sight in my neck of the woods of camouflaged test vehicles coming out of the Salt River Canyon on US60 has changed – you see quite a few tarped, covered and duct taped on flatbed wreckers rather than driving under their own power.
While I am in no way interested in giving up my politically-incorrect fleet of freedom vehicles to partake in this electric car nonsense, I do believe that I will start scouting roadside real estate along one of the longer, steeper grades in the area, and purchase me a wrecker as well as a fleet of the most offensive cars that the 80’s and early 90’s had to offer. “I’m sorry sir, but your Tesla/Ray-o-vac isn’t going to make it up the mountain, but I do so happen to have an Oldsmobile Firenza that will get you and the family to Grandma’s in time for dinner. Only $250 for the weekend, with unlimited miles – just never mind the smell”.
I tried to send you email, but gmail kept insisting that you weren’t on Yahoo. So I used this method to get around it. I have never registered on Facebook etc… .
There is a excellent article Charity Endureth.com about self-driving autos and a new request to take part of the frequencies presently used by ham radio operators and divert them to the autos. It also presents many uses for controlling people and spy on them.
http://charityendureth.com/2015/08/05/bosch-wants-ham-radio-frequencies-for-self-driving-cars/
It’s well-written and is right up your alley.
I have a great idea: You need to heat the car in winter, and if you used electricity for heat, your range would be compromised too much. So don’t use electricity. Use gasoline. My dad once had a Beetle, and because the engine was air cooled, it had a gas-burning heater. Worked great, and fast. Tesla should incorporate a gas tank into their car, and do the same. I hear you can get gas most anywhere, and quick, unlike a recharge.
The Tesla is a toy. If you can afford one you can afford an IC vehicle too. Rechargeable electrics will never dominate the industry. The infrastructure will never be able to support this. Lithium batteries are the equivalent of our current insane automotive designs. They are incredibly complicated to manage just like all the vehicle control systems in modern cars. And as we see from time to time lithium gets a little uppity and goes sub critical, turning the Tesla into El Torcha. Until and unless they master a technology that allows on board energy production like from a fuel cell or cold fusion reaction, Electrics will fill nothing more than a few niches. Of interest is the Chinese assertion to go all electric. Since they seem to have the keys to the printing press it only make sense for them to do something worthwhile with their fiat fiesta as opposed to building ghost cities. But I bet they’ll produce some low cost well engineered E cars they’ll be glad to let you test.
I agree, QueeQueg! I think a few years down the road, someone’ll see the faded remains of a fast charger somewhere, and explain to their kid “They had these expensive electric cars in the teens, and they actually sold people on the idea that these charging stations were going to litter the countryside….but they never said anything about building a zillion new generating facilities to produce all of the electricity; and the cars turned to crap after 6 years, and no one could cash in on their warranties, because the company which made the cars went bankrupt from all of the lawsuits from cars bursting into flames. People actually thought that this would work! Can you imagine?!”.
“Elon Musk……. is the L. Ron Hubbard of auto manufacturing. Toss in Heaven’s Gate? Maybe Jim Jones?”
That’s pretty good, John. Elon even looks like a televangelist.
HAHAhaha!!! THAT is a good ‘un, Ed! That’s quotable!
Damn Ed, I think you nailed Eloi. Come unto me children and I will fill you with my own brand of propaganda.
Elon Musk is in good company along with Joel Olsteen, Billy and Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Ted Hagard. Charlatans and pick pockets all.
He is the L. Ron Hubbard of auto manufacturing. Toss in Heaven’s Gate? Maybe Jim Jones?
He could have been anyone of these carney barkers who infest America with their squalid mega churches that sprout from the American landscape like toadstools after a warm rain.
Instead he offers his own version of salvation at 40 grand a crack which is somewhat less than some elderly couple tossing their life savings at the likes of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Still it’s a good chunk of change and fortunately, from what I’ve seen, only a toy for those with the expendable income to buy one, that is unless one wishes to accumulate even more debt to the RKM ( Rothchild Kazarian Mafia) and go in the hole for another 7-8 years.
Battery technology needs to improve beyond that of hobby status. Electric model planes, helis, drones, cars and boats are one thing; trying to get from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time, safely is quite another. Even with the Lipos that I use with my planes and boats still require a certain amount of time , even at a 5C charge rate.
Elon’s taking his show to China anyway. Before long, not much of a Tesla will be made here but the nameplates. Because our manufacturing base is gutted. And our labor and laws can’t compete with an actually capitalist type of economy, like New China.
Elon Musk has preliminary deal for Tesla owned factory in China
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/10/tesla-has-preliminary-deal-for-tesla-owned-factory-in-china.html
Until the principle of sink or swim returns to American business. All the manufacturing type jobs are going to continue to swim to other shores.
Trump hasn’t done much about the unfair tariff system yet…
China charges a tariff of 25 percent on imported cars, compared with 2.5 percent in the United States and 9.8 percent in the European Union. China also has a 17 percent value-added tax — a kind of sales tax — that is charged not only on the price of the car but also on the tariff, so that the taxes are effectively compounded.
And the ELIO and the Dale lol!
http://gas2.org/2013/08/21/the-elio-motors-saga-if-it-looks-like-a-dale-and-quacks-like-a-dale/
It seems all is not well twixt the Muskter and the vaunted Consumer Reports either:
“Consumer Reports and Tesla Feud Continues Over Model 3”
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/10/consumer-reports-tesla-feud-continues-model-3/
Considering the perpetual hard-on you’ve had for Tesla, is this really a surprise?
Hi Jeffersonian,
The solution is easy – as regards the cars. Let me drive one. I will write fairly about the experience, a I always have with every car I have ever written about – including the Chevy Volt.
Never crap in the driver’s seat of the car you plan to borrow. I wholeheartedly support your right to perform a full assessment of a Tesla automobile. In fact, I am enthusiastically looking forward to your expert and detailed report. If Tesla won’t budge, why not approach a dealership or attempt to rent a Tesla?
Hi Jeffersonian,
Musk is a control freak and restricts access to his cars to the Blowjob Press. That is the nut of the problem.
Tesla’s dealers aren’t going to cross musk, either. I’d need a couple of days in one, at least.
Is it Musk you seek to drive or his automobile? As far as your views about Tesla’s CEO, you may be correct on all counts. If the prize you’re after is the test drive, keep trying to secure a vehicle to evaluate. Your readers eagerly await your appraisal.
Really? Eric’s readers eagerly await his appraisal? I’m one of Eric’s readers, but I was never polled about this.
I’m not eagerly awaiting…. The whole concept of the Tesla is flawed. Nay, the whole concept of electric cars is flawed- that being the idea that they produce zero emissions, when in reality, their emissions are just remotely located to where the electricity comes from.
The Tesla business model is flawed; that of relying on tax subsidies and carbon credits instead of selling items which the free market demands at a price point they are willing to pay- and still, Musk[rat] can’t turn a profit, but loses money.
Tesla’s business practices are indeed control-freakish- to the point where Tesla will even remotely disable their cars which end up at the salvage auction, so that they can not be rebuilt; and they are tightly controling access to repair parts, etc.
Despite the fact that the cars are still very young, a quick perusal of Youtube or any search engine will show that myriad problems are manifesting themselves already- from build-quality to software and electronic issues- things which would not be tolerated on any other car that sells at Tesla’s price point- or even cheaper ones.
Not to even mention all the quirks of the various unnecessary electric gizmos with which the cars are festooned- from the automatically-opening doors and hatches; and even glove compartments….to the keyless/fobless access….
And there are plenty of reviews on Youtube already documenting the Tesla’s one strong-point: It’s performance- IF you don’t mind having it at the cost of reduced range.
So I think by now, that there is enough info out there for us to have a pretty good idea of what a Tesla is like. The thing that makes people like Teslas, is emotion. Those who are impressed by “the latest technology” (and by Musk[rat]’s BS), and who are ignorantly on the Global-Warming “Green”/Agenda 21/socialist bandwagon, will be fans of Teslas, and will be willing to sacrifice convenience and mucho dollars in order to be able to drive the embodiment of their misguided ideals.
The rest of us live in the real world.
Hi Nunz!
The thing I want to do is drive the Tesla as it’s marketed… that is, as a performance car. And let’s see what that does to the range… 🙂
My test ride of the BMW electric scooter confirms what I suspected. This idea that a performance car can be an electric car and an economical and practical car is absurd.
OK, eric, I finally have a story to tell about Tesla performance. I was at a red light in one of two lanes, and a Tesla was beside me. I wanted to see him take off fast the way they are supposed to do. The light turned green, I started off, watching the Tesla in my side mirror and it never moved.
It stayed there at the intersection until I was out of sight of it. Guess the battery died or something. I’ll have to wait for another one to see some of that acceleration they are supposed to have.
Ed! The Tessler owner was probably so elated to see the light “go green” that he probably just sat there and wrote a poem.
Yeah, that’s it. He was writing a paen to Elon, after which he took off like a rocket. I wasn’t there to see it.
Yeah, Eric….. I’ve heard some Tesla fans online (probably shills) make claims that stepping on the gas in a Tessler doesn’t affect the range “that much”- which of course is BS.
I guess it would be nice if you could document just how bad it really hurts the range. I think you would then be the only reference- and the only one to really put the truth out there.
And of course, if Musk[rat] were aware of this, he’d probably put some kind of gadget in all his cars to keep them from moving if they detect your DNA!
Hey, here’s an idear: There’s a business out there which rents *other people’s* specialty cars- I.e. you can rent a Hummer or a Lambo, or a 67 GTO that some regular person owns, and rents out occasionally through the business- kinda like AirBNB for cars. I forget what they’re called, but Doug Demurro gets a lot of the cars he reviews from them. Bet ya they’re doing Tesslers already…..
Or maybe just Google “Rent a Tesla”….
I just Googled it…. DO IT! It’s doable! You can get one.
“Really? Eric’s readers eagerly await his appraisal? I’m one of Eric’s readers, but I was never polled about this.”
Call a cop.
>”Call a cop”<
I'd NEVER do that! [He don't know me vewwy well, do he?]
I gotta say, I’m skeptical you care about the Jeffersonian ideal. But let me concede one related point to you.
Elon Musk is far from the worst crony billionaire. Gates is destroying what little remains of African independence. Bezos’ biggest customer is the CIA and other clandestine organization. He’s destroying the remnants of the once free Internet. Bloomberg has decimated the free choices inherent in the American food supply. He’s the ultimate health safety clover.
But Eric isn’t a tech journalist, or a corporate journalist, so he doesn’t much cover those far more damaging Crony Billionaires.
He’s an auto journalist. So he keeps Elon Musks holy feet to the fire. He and countless others keep unraveling the myths of Free Market Savior Elon which so obviously aren’t really true. Quite the opposite really, Elon is the diversionary tactic. What they’re really doing is destroying the free transportation options we uniquely enjoy, unlike most of the world.
If they get their way, the old technology will be holocausted. And the new green stuff will be all that’s left. But oh darn, turns out there are some growing pains and unforeseen glitches. The Green Revolution will have to be postponed. Please do your part by taking the bus and riding your bicycle while your ruling class works to overcome the problem we’ve imposed on you.
You forgot the great vampire squid- Goldman Sachs and the more than evil Monsanto and Google.
Ever hear of Google Jigsaw? probably not. 20,000 in it employ. Mostly terrorists. Responsible for the Sarin gas attack in Syria and the attack on a bus load of children in which more than 60 were murdered.
Gordon Duff at Veterans Today is accumulating evidence by the day. enough to have the CEO of Google and his subs arrested and charged for war crimes.
Being retired and unable to afford a vehicle I do everything on foot. At least the supermarket is a short distance away. When I was working I got rid of my 18-speed mountain bike because walking is safer. I drove my last vehicle for about 10 years but it finally became too expensive to maintain.
Men who have saved for their retirement are the hardest hit by all these communism 2.0 schemes. Every thing they do degrades the dollar, and savers are robbed by this worst than anyone.
Hi Tor,
It’s my view that “investing” in anything other than a debt-free life and physical assets such as land and precious metals is risky and foolish. On the other hand, I sometimes think that perhaps I ought to Join the Club and max out every credit card I have, get a loan on my house and live like a Medici for a few years… then, when the collectors come, just tell ’em they lose and drop to the ground and flop like a fish
I’m not a lone wolf here, if I were, I might do the same.
I put on one of my wife’s shirts and went to Wally World today. Drove through some of those school zones with my window down to.
I didn’t wait for those little snot noses like they thought I should, so the guy yells THIS IS A SCHOOL ZONE.
I had my Mom’s glasses on, so in a feeble gay sounding voice I said tharry I diddun see em.
I had my Dads sedan, which has a handicapped thing hanging from the rearview. Then I got out and limped over to those electronic shopping buggies.
Told the Wally employee I needed knee surgery in my most fabulous yet crippled victim’s voice. He then regaled me with his actual litany of ailments, which almost made me feel guilty, but no, I must continue the social experiment.
Stupid Tesla Cripple’s Buggy takes for ever, but eventually I got to the camera SD card aisle and got a USB adapter so I could transfer the wife’s parents European Vacation movies to a USB flash disk they could watch on their Big Screen.
Ran into the same worker, and he didn’t even check my bag or receipt. I could have had a bag in my pocket from earlier, so as to make him think I had paid in electronics. (Which this time I did.)
Good to know if the SHTF, I will use my skills to rob Wally to pay Tor.
My favorite gypsy trick is where I just cheerfully pushed a whole cart of unpaid groceries right out the door, and nobody even made a peep about it.
Their are two great powers in this world now. Eastern Ninjas. And Western Gypsies. You might think all them Section 8ers are dumb, but they’re anything but.
Calling them names doesn’t do anything. You should know what they know, IMO, it just might help you survive when Der Tag Kommt.
Any way. . . .
Being part of a pack…
The best I could do, to get “my part” of the family loot, was to leave with a bunch of Berkshire Hathaway stock, somebody had bought long ago, and had gone up considerably in value.
Legally I didn’t have to do it this way, since the prior assets were in my name, or in entities that I could control.
But when dealing with my family, the best bet is always to err on the rubber necking side of the caution tape.
It’s quite a ride every 8:30am Central Time when the ticker tape starts spitting out, like those little paper tickets you get at a gypsy carnival.
I tried the market before, when a friend got me a job at American Express as an Options Principle, back when day trading was all the rage.
Probably lost half of what I made there, gambling with a big option position on Del Monte that ended with me slipping on a few rotten Big Apples and Big Banana Peals.
Never again will I do battle with Jew York. I ended up being their little Goy Toy.
The only thing I ever did really right, was to get selected by the family Matriarch as the holder of the clan’s assets.
This involved a many summers of sleeping in the same bed as her when very young(as a platonic husband substitute) at least as best I can remember.
Later, working “her” extensive acres of soybean crops every summer when not in CatLick skewl.
She was the greatest lady I ever new, even had one of them famous Chicago gangster last names. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she was some kind of moll for them back in her flapper days.
I can almost touch the jazz age, just looking at these costumes, LOL.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/bc/2b/debc2b996f49cfa74eefd76c21eb4496.jpg
My current cozy condition is living proof, that there is no greater power, than the beating of hearts.
Do you know what noise awakes you?
Every morning from your bed
A-coming from the farthest hillside
A-coming from inside your head
You have heard
You have heard the loudest sound
In this and every world you can think of
Chorus: Louder than tanks on the highway
Louder than bombers in flight
Louder than noises of hatred
Dancing us from darkest night is the rhythm of love
Powered on the the beating of hearts
And did you know you had this power?
Drumming on it always stays
Never try to use it badly
Tunes of good are all it plays
You have heard
You have heard the loudest sound
In this and every world you can visit
[Chorus]
For a heart without love is a song with no words
And a tune to which no-one is listening
So your heart must give love and you’ll find that
You shine like rain on the leaves you’ll be glistening
You have heard
You have heard the loudest sound
In this and every world you can think of
Louder than thoughts of dictators
Louder than rattling swords
Louder than loading of rifles
Louder than screaming warlords
[Chorus]
XTC – Beating of Hearts = Andy Partridge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dXQBVvBtO8
Who told you about my only dance move?
The crappie flop?
Whenever a good song came on when I had money and was vacationing in the Carry Bean See on some kind of Booze Crooze tractor shed on a raft.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8byP35sVw4
Dame Agua, a good crappie flopping tune.
I would always hit the ground and start a flopping when a good song would come on. I miss the days when I lived as a Medici as I turned a rather large fortune into a pitiful small fortune during my “investment phase.”
I remember when I saved my wife’s life when she got caught on top of coral reef far away from shore.
I just jumped up on the fool thing and threw her back in the water part. Reefs are all fun and games until you’re drunk and beached on top of one, she truly learned.
Does the absurdity never end? How have I even been living with this surreality all these years?
I guess its cause I’m happy being the Mayor of Simpleton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Da9sc6YDBo
i know for a fact everyone is twice as smart as me, and half as unethical.
Well I don’t know how to write a big hit song,
And all crossword puzzles well I just shun,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that’s I love you.
I’m not proud of the fact that I never learned much,
Just feel I should say,
what you get is all real,
I can’t put on an act,
It takes brains to do that anyway. (And anyway…)
And I can’t unravel riddles, problems and puns,
How the home computer has me on the run,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that’s I love you (I love you).
If depth of feeling is a currency,
(please be upstanding for the Mayor of Simpleton),
Then I’m the man who grew the money tree,
(no Chain of Office and no hope of getting one).
Some of your friends are too brainy to see,
That they’re paupers and that’s how they’ll stay.
Well I don’t know how many pounds make up a ton,
Of all the Nobel prizes that I’ve never won,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that’s I love you.
When all logic grows cold and all thinking gets done,
You’ll be warm in the arms of the Mayor of Simpleton.
You’ll be warm in the arms of the Mayor of Simpleton. You’ll be warm in the arms of the Mayor.
(Please be upstanding for the Mayor of Simpleton.)
I’m as anti-crony capitalist as Mr. Peters is. But the question was, “Why won’t they send me a Tesla to test drive?”. I am merely offering one plausible answer.
ah, ahora veo amigo
You wrote: “This is meant to be helpful to you, the prospective buyer.” Honest reviews also help the car companies improve their products. All those negative reviews of Hyundai quality back in the 1980s forced them to improve or die. GM’s denial of review cars to you shows they’re more concerned about PC than meeting consumer needs. We’ll see how that works for them in the future. Oh, and they still owe us taxpayers about $24 billion from the bailout.
Hi John,
Thanks – and, just wait! GM’s new slogan is “You don’t own the vehicle; you own the experience of the brand.”
Eric,
I would like for Tesla to explain how I would be able to make our semi-annual trip to visit our friends in Colorado. We live in the Texas Hill Country about 50 miles north of San Antonio. Our friends, who we usually visit twice a year, live just northwest of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. It is 876 road miles between the two houses. We drive it straight through each way and, including fuel stops, usually make it in about 13½ hours. Granted our van has almost 500 mile range and has toilet facilities and refrigerator, so convenience stops and two fuel stops do not take much time. I wonder how long it would take and how many nights in a hotel with a Tesla. Internal combustion rules. LOL!!!
Harry, et al,
The answer is that in the long run the likes of Elon Musk and his ilk don’t want you to have the freedom to travel at your pleasure. In the glorious socialist state envisioned for you and me, only the connected have any degree of freedom. Look to the EU countries if you want to know what’s planned for us.
Amen Giuseppe!
Elon wants you to be a meatsack behind the wheel – paying a “subscription” for the privilege of transport.
PS: Got your earlier note; no worries – I get it – and, thanks!
Hi Harry,
Exactly!
When I go into “town,” it’s a round trip of about 60 miles. I have friends all over the state – and while VA is not Texas, some of these friends are more than 200 miles away. I want a car that can make it without having to stop for hours – or even half an hour – to refuel. That can handle sustained highway travel at 75 with the AC on.
Tesla makes a very expensive, very impractical and inefficient toy.
Texas is well over 6 Virginias. 243 thou TX square miles / 26 thou VA square miles.
Texas is far superior in regards to privately owned property. Virginia is 9.2% owned by the feds.
Look at how many of your woods are owned only by Dear Leaders.
State Managed Lands. Virginia’s forests contribute $30.5 billion annually to the commonwealth’s economy while enhancing the health and well-being of its citizens. The forest resource provides raw materials for numerous forest products. The estimated value at risk for the state’s 13,458,000 acres of productive forest land is $2,044 per acre; the total risk is over $27 billion
http://www.dof.virginia.gov/manage/state-lands.htm
I just threw up in my mouth after reading that disgusting paragraph from the Virginia Dear Leaders.
State owned land enhances the health and well being of the citizens. Ain’t that a laugh?
Don’t like it, keep the hell out. I’m not all that enamoured of Texas, but I don’t go slamming it. Been there, lived there for a year and the only parg I liked was the coast. Give the rest back to the Mexicans ( but keep all mineral rights). I’m a son of the South and Va born and bred and DAMNED proud of it.
I lived in North Carolina before. I doubt Virginia is much different. All I meant is the more publicly owned land, the greater the tragedy of the commons. And the greater their ability to run their congames.
I apologize if I was unclear. I would like to see the stolen woods in VA being given back to the victims. And all the other public land. Wherever that happens, you’re in no better position than were the Indians when the Europeans arrived.
If you like being infantilized and left bereft of dignity and property. So that you’re wards of a predatory ruling class. If you like things like national parks.
You’re probably going to have a bad tim. Because that’s a welfare kind of mentality that doesn’t lend itself to living freely and taking personal responsibility.
No offence taken, I just get kinda touchy concidering where this state used to be, to where it’s fallen to. All the POS’s up round DC and and Richmond, I hate what this place has turned to, and then you got Hiliary’s butt-buddy McAliffe…. but there is still nowhere else I’d rather live.
No worries. To my mind, the pilgrims who agreed to work in the Virginia Company chartered lands are where the Real America began.
Screw those thieving Plymouth Council Yankees who stole the working men’s lands long before they later stole the “Confederate States” lands.
Like Bill Shakespeare should have said, “First thing we do, is kill all the Plymouth Council Yankees.”
Okay, not kill, but definitely forcefully take all the Virginia Council’s land back.
Better to stand up forcefully for one’s self and later see you erred. Than to be to passive when being victimized.
Anyway, I’m sure I deserved a proverbial boot in the ass for one thing or another.
Forgot the Pilgrim’s Charter map.
http://slideplayer.com/slide/7328398/24/images/3/Pilgrims+Get+a+Charter+The+Pilgrims+received+a+charter+from+the+Virginia+Company+in+1620+to+settle+in+northern+Virginia..jpg
The majority of early American settlers were “slaves” on a temporary basis. Probably a permanent basis if they didn’t provide the promised labor.
Getting land before you even worked, but also being a slave until you paid back the “mortgage” on that land was a pretty good system.
I’m sure a lot of people would still sell themselves into servitude, just to have the chance to have some land to farm and ranch on their own, once their debts are repaid.
Hi Tor L, I have also lived in both N.C. and TX in the past. I loved the mountains of western NC, but the land prices are way out of my price range and the state is too crowded for me. There are a lot of things I liked about TX, but the comparison between TX and VA are like comparing grapes to burritos. Here is a chart comparing Fed and State owned land in the U.S: https://www.nrcm.org/documents/publiclandownership.pdf
I worked in west Texas, and I know that millions of acres of land are owned by the University of Texas. I would not really call those lands private property because they were given to the university by the state, and the university cannot sell any part of the land. I also have to wonder if the profits from the thousands of oilfield leases _really_ benefit university students since the hugh influx of available cash generally causes prices to rise. The town of Big Lake is land-locked thanks to the ownership of the land surrounding it is owned by that university, which causes a steep rise of land ownership and rent.
Further, only the eastern 3rd or 4th of Texas really has forests with tall trees and plenty of rain. The rest is semi-arid to arid land with mesquite and cactus aside from irrigated areas. Texans brag about not having income tax, but the other taxes and fees easily make up for that.
I really do like rural Texans though, except for the fact that many of them are fond of George Bush.
My own state of Missouri isn’t great either. Our combined state taxes work out to being about the same as yours percentage wise. We do have greater gun freedom here. We also have plenty of forests and rain. I also see far fewer people getting pulled over by cops than I did in Texas. Sadly, there is nowhere in Missouri where you can legally drive 75 to 85 mph. We also have some real scumbags here, but I don’t know if it is better or worse in Texas.
Hey Brian, you can thank the idjit politicians of NC for actively courting the hordes who are fleeing the NYC metro area for those high NC prices. NC actually does advertising to lure NYers!- which is why the state is fast turning into a model of the hell-hole which NY is. (And why I automatically avoided even bothering to check-out NC when I escaped NY!)- I swear, 50% of the expats from Long Island must be in Cary, NC! NC is the new FL.
edit: The town of Big Lake is land-locked thanks to the ownership of the land surrounding it is owned by that university, which causes a steep rise of land ownership (PRICES) and rent(al COSTS).
To the tune of 70+ gals of gas ?( haven’t seen many vans that got good mileage, assume you have 30
+ gal gas tank? ICE rules! (rules people’think about $4 a gal gas again) thats alright get you a full tank of freedom, in about 5 minutes( maybe you should find a “Hotshot” truck deadheading, might cut you a good deal when you consider the actual cost per mile of driving.Of course, you can’t put that much range in a Tesla unless you hooked a battery cart to it( now there’s something you could drop off and switch at the proper place) travel is expensive right now, petroleum does rule
Kevin it can be done:
Sweetwater, TX 20mins stop
×C Childress, TX 30 mins stop
×D Amarillo, TX 50 min stop fill up to max.
×E Santa Rosa, NM 20 mins
×F Santa Fe, NM 30 mins
Pagosa springs
About 850 miles. If the destination in Pagosa springs has no electricity, then stop in Farmington.
There is about 2.5 hrs of charging + 11-12 hrs windshield time. It’s a long day for sure. There is a shorter alternate through Trinidad CO but the last leg to Pagosa Springs appears to be Stretch.
Hi Electron,
Yes, it can be done. I can also ride my two-stroke 250 CC triple motorcycle across the state… assuming I don’t mind stopping every 100 miles for fuel, every 200 miles to adjust points and clean plugs… and so on.
Why the willingness to put up with a longer, more hassle-filled trip? What’s the pay off?
Maybe your connections in AL OR AZ and UT can help you?
::: ::: :::
Bill Meyer
Good for President Trump – he’ll declassify the remaining JFK assassination documents. Wonder how badly they will be redacted? Given that the “official story” has been that it was a lone nut gunman L.H. Oswald, one can’t help but be suspicious that ANYTHING was classified from the start. Of course EVERYONE believes it was just a lone nut, right?….RIGHT???? :-0
The entire event has been redacted. They have had 54 years to do it.
Hi Eric,
Why don’t you try to go as an ordinary guy and get a test drive. I went some time back, and maybe because i have a job title or because I’m a borderline millennial they assumed i have money and id buy into it easily, they offered me an extended test drive of a couple days as well. I did the test drive on the day, but haven’t had the time for the extended one yet. Was a fun joyride…. and interestingly, as holier than thou and goodie goodie as they act, they actually had a speed camera free route and really encouraged you to floor it. What I found – it is a very different experience. The instant bursts of power are brilliant at a traffic signal. Even on the bends, it does feel stable, but the thing is HEAVY….. on narrow bendy B roads, didn’t feel as confident. Maybe it takes a bit of getting used to, I don’t know the guy said it had the best traction control system as it can control power to all 4 wheels independently so it would never slip. I had a feeling if I did loose it – you could never re-gain control and would be in the ditch in a ball of fire…. The other real difference I felt bw it and an ICE car with a transmission is that no matter when you floor it, whether at 30 or 70, the response is the same, and the time to gain 30MPH felt exactly the same, which was an interesting feel. Got to 100 so quick didn’t realise. Was also eerily quite. Felt like I was inside an RC car or something.
Now whether its a 120K car – I don’t know. I didn’t feel that. A BMW M6 could be kit out much better, and can be picked up for 30K less. If you go for a luxury an S class merc would have a much better feel for much less. Infact funnily, 2 other friends of mine went and got a test drive, both of them went and got high performance ICE sports cars because when they test drove them it just felt better (one an M6 grand coupe and the other an F type SVR). Again I’m no expert, and my view was based on a short test drive.
Regarding real world practically, would I use/get it – probably not. Ok, lets say I had the money to blow on a car, its too big for a city car (the UK, and london has really narrow crowded roads), and its too big for the school run. On the other side, the range is an issue for long runs. I told the guy at tesla – he said that every few hours you have to stop anyways. I said yes but the only way I can make it work is syncing charging it with both of my kids having to take a piss/eat something, with my wife having to stop for one thing or another. And thats not going to happen. Though I think electric cars/plug in hybrids do have a place in crowded European cities, i don’t think a huge 100K sedan with limited range is going to address that. Ofcourse – the choice of electric or ICE should be left to the user – not the government, which is why I’m also suspicious like most of you here.
Id highly recommend you go and talk your way into a test drive. Dont feel guilty – you probably paid for the damn thing anyways!!
Hi Nasir,
I am pretty sure I am on Elon’s Enemies List (and I know he has one; I will spill details about this in due time). I bet they’d flag me if I went in for a test drive, but maybe not.
Aber, there is no Tesla storefront here in the Woods. I’d have to schlepp to DC, I think.
Tesla claims to have a “gallery” in Richmond on their “find us” site:
https://www.tesla.com/findus
but, True Cars says “no dealers in Richmond”:
https://www.truecar.com/local-car-prices/va/tesla/richmond/
Hi Ed,
Richmond is about four hours’ haul for me… bad enough. But I have become severely city-phobic. The density of Clovers and all…
Fancy a jaunt to Camp Nou to watch some macho sporty men prance in tight uniforms?
https://www.bethq.com/sites/default/files/uploads/camp-nou.jpg
eric, that phobia probably won’t get better. I could be driving a new rig with the latest everything….but I continue to schlep around in the patch staying on lease roads as much as possible and avoiding the smallest of towns. A couple of winters back I was running through the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex and realized I hadn’t lost a thing in that mess. Final trip I vowed to stay in the patch with old smoky. At least I know the DOT by name and they know mine(Hey—when did you start driving this?, didn’t recognize you in it). Well, it could be worse. I could once again get robbed by the DOT in N. Carolina…..never carry cash or at least don’t show it when asked (uh, it’s in the truck, be right back), must be the reason I had some under the floor mat.
Hey Nas. Let me tell you about one City in America.
I had this gay friend who I used to dance with at the Desert Dude Debutante Club (more WP spell check errors? doesn’t like debutante? maybe I’m not really on wordpress but on an NSA clone where spell check is hecked?)
Any he’s got one of those VIP Vegas service businesses (he’s half Vietnamese and knows lots of Vietbabes) and he also is the manager of a dozen payday loan stores.
The round about point is that I used to go and help him do his books file his state forms that sorta thing. (In retrospect, I think he was sucking the owner of the Legal Leg Breaker Businesses dry. In a financial not a fabulous LGBBQ kinda way.)
He had digitally stored video and still photos of everyone who ever came in any of those 12 businesses. And he had software that combined them with his social and financial credit scores, so that he had a full dossier with which to collect on bad debts and such.
If this was more recent, he’d also have any customer’s online and social media data depositories too.
I’m with Eric, that Tesla is just the sort who uses “tech” to his advantage.
You should see Adam Corolla’s videos on being on Trump’s The Apprentice. American business is one big fish bowl. Like I need to tell a Brit that. You’ve got the ring of surveillance fire panopticons everywhere both private and public as well.
There is no such thing as “going to the dealer as a private” anything. Big Brothers are always watching you, or at least he might be, so watch your six twelve in the x axis y axis and z axes at all times when out and about.
Actually maybe he had employee “press a button” when a potential surveillance collection was needed. I doubt he went that in depth for every random walk in except temporarily storing the visual data, until the EOD when it was decided who was who and what was what.
Every major Vegas Casino has eye’s in the skies walls floors everywhere. Eyes with ears probably. (Don’t know for sure, but I here’d things.)
and we’re still waiting for the footage of the casino and area cameras that show the creep who alledgedly did the shoot-em-up, as certainluy caught on vid somewhere somehow some time……
On scene investigator Nick Falco banned from Mandalay Bay, MGM, for life AFTER HE DISCOVERED THIS!
https://www.intellihub.com/intellihub-exclusive-on-scene-investigator-banned-from-mandalay-bay-for-life-after-he-discovered-this/
It won’t happen unless someone can make it happen.
The owners of the property probably figured all news is bad news. Best for it to blow over, until its just a historical footnote, like Sandy Hood.
I already know who the culprit is. The controlling class who won’t let individuals and businesses provide their own defense. And who do a terrible disservice with their useless so-called defense.
A window shooter is something that could have been anticipated and dealt with by the fans at the concert and the owners of the property.
But there are laws that prevent that from happening, because the ruling class cares more about staying in power by any means necessary. Than from ever addressing what should be easy to solve mass casualty tragic scenarios.
When going full speed ahead with a Tesla, you would empty the battery in less than an hour, but you would probably also be about 200 kilometers from your starting point.
It seems that going at approximately 200 km/h, then you consume at least 50 kWh/100 km.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKoNNY3BL4o
I like the title of the video. But the vehicle maker made me nope the faen out of it. As an LGTQian, do Teslas even come in pink and flaming rainbow finishes, or are they totally gender insensitive?
Did you even buckle up for safety when going 200 K like some profligate dinosaur juice guzzler who doesn’t GAF?
Do you like the song In The (Scandy) Navy by the SoHo Village Pea Pull?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmGuy0jievs
Seems like a good anthem for all 25 million of you islamistanians
(((Hagel Skandinavien SKol SKol SKol)))
Nobody watch Jone Jack Hearts video please, not until Tess Luhh deigns to give indie journalists like my Prideful Partner Eric some method of testing their claims, just like every IC manufacturer always has.
Hi Tor,
Or, I could go the other way… imagine me doing video reviews of a new car dressed as an SS Obersturmfuhrer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWgHiUZYRSo
That would probably not go over so well…
If I still lived in Charlotte, I’d have asked to come up there and do those commercials for you?
Could have brought my Home Depot tiki torches I still have from the CharSlutsVille Virgin Knee Ya rally I went to…
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hHNAUUdOcG_vUYgh-Vmbz0yGKeY=/0x217:3870×2367/1080×600/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56164505/GettyImages_830696156.0.jpg
Homeland Depot will light up the globalist liberal’s night.
This son of an IB loves him some San Quentin Tino movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7gbomB_ZhY
Fancy a jaunt to Camp Nou to watch some macho sporty men prance in tight uniforms?
https://www.bethq.com/sites/default/files/uploads/camp-nou.jpg
The wife and I re-watched Inglorious Basterds this week. I couldn’t help but smile and think of the “What would Hitler say/do” YT’s of yore. Haven’t seen one in a while but they’re always good, esp. when involving sports teams and masses of people.
It’s infantile escapism of the best kind.
I’ve retreated to the cradle myself via San Quentintino’s movies. Almost all of them are great.
http://losmovies.ac/director/5463/watch-quentin-tarantino-movies-online
The movie is a zionist wet dream.
DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT
Eric, I’ve hooned Teslas in the mountain roads around here, and their range is severely affected by speed. That 1000lb battery pack has the equivalent energy content of a couple gallons of gas, and the car manages to go 250 miles off a charge by being very efficient, and the biggest source of drag is air resistance due to speed, it grows as the cube of your speed, meaning it takes eight times the energy to go twice as fast. If you stay below 35 mph, you could probably get 400 miles out of that pack. If you go 100mph, you’re looking something in the low 100 mile range. If you accelerate a lot heavily, you use much more power than normal, but you overheat the inverter before your drain your battery. The thing goes into reduced power mode after three or four hard pulls. The one I drove overheated and went into reduced power mode after about 8 miles of twisty roads. It still drove fine afterward, but it was more like a standard car than a powerful electric car.
Using your headlights has no effect on range, 100W power usage is nothing compared to a 100 kWh battery pack. When driving on the highway around 70 mph, you’re using something like 30-50hp to maintain your speed, and the tesla is on the lower end of that. If you turn on your headlights, you add only 0.1HP on top of the 40 you’re already using, negligible. If you blast the A/C, you’re using 2-3HP worth, which will hurt your range a bit less than 10%.
Electric cars are all about being mega-efficient in managing their equivalent of a 3 gallon gas tank that takes a few hours to fill up.
Some of my local fascist politicians are proposing limiting gas pumps to electric charger speeds, to level this playing field.
Hi OP,
Hat tip for the test drive info! This is precisely what I suspected. And I suspect it’s why they do not farm the cars out for test drives by non-controlled journalists. I know the type they are farming them out to. Most are not evil hacks like that Frederic character I wrote about. Most are “mom” and “bloggers” who drive every car just the same, which is like a Clover driving a Prius. Buckled up for safety, no “speeding.” Going gaga over the gadgets – and creaming themselves over the hypermiling.
I suppose most people do drive this way. Clover has taken over…
Why is it that I can charge my car battery off a $100 or less charger but these lectric cars take much higher voltages than can be supplied from a standard power point outlet? Just another way of making profit for some other crony. Why can’t they put an alternator on one of the motors that feeds back into the battery to keep the battery at full charge? Surely there must be room for an alternator, a belt and some extra wires in these cars?
your car battery has likely, at most, about .7K amp hour capacity. The Tesla has perhaps a full K amp hours… more than a hundred times as much capacity. Your 12 volt lead acid battery is haappy to drink juice from a ten amp stream at aboiut 14 volts. I don’t know the voltage Tesla are running in their main power pack, I’m guessing its at least 50 volts, but because of its HUGE capacity a power tsource that could fill it quickly likley runs off a 220 volt 50 amp circuit. Your car drinks about 140 watts, a Tesla, if my volt guess is close, more like 2400 watts. Fifteen times.
As to an alternator reconverting the power from a wheel to recharge, can’t work, unless you r=are engine braking downhill, which feature the car already has. Thing is, you convert electric to kinetic, a loss for state transfer. If you then try and convert the kinetic back to electric, you lose again in a state transfer. In other words you must put more energy into the system you’ve created than you can ever get back out, and that does not even count friction and heat losses involved in the mechanisms. Nice thought, but enerty in equals energy out after heat =l state change, and friction losses. Out is always less than in.
Until Tionico straightened you out I thought we had a perpetual motion crank on the line.
My best friend owns a P100D Model S. On a dive trip to the Florida Keys, he and I swapped keys for the evening so that he and some others could use the bed of my truck to haul wet gear around for an impromptu night-dive. I wanted to stay in for the evening, get some food, catch up on sleep.
I decided to take the Tesla down to the grocery store some 20 minutes up the overseas highway. My impressions on the Tesla: It’s nice. The torque and acceleration are fantastic. I’m use to driving a 4 cylinder manual transmission Chevy, and mashing the go-pedal in the Tesla as I merged onto the overseas highway forced a “Jesus Christ!” from my lips as my head hit the seat-back and loose shit on the floor slid around the passenger foot wells.
The car looks great in all black with plasti-dip covering everything silver, and the windows tented beyond the “legal” limit, including the whole of the windscreen. The auto-drive “autopilot” feature his handy. It reduces the workload enough that I felt comfortable looking away from a strait road for a moment or two to admire a key deer and the all of the other weird things that bring me back to Florida’s Caribbean a few times each year. When the road gets bendy or the painted lines go missing, you have to take control back from the computer. It won’t stop for you at a stoplight or stop sign, so you still must pay attention. The car does a pretty good job of avoiding traffic and maintaining distance. When you let off of the accelerator the regeneration is pretty aggressive, so a person could skillfully avoid braking for the most part if you can plan a far enough distance ahead. It’s a similar feeling to leaving an IC vehicle in a lower gear an letting the engine’s pumping losses drain away speed, albeit the Tesla feels more aggressive to slow you down than my pickup.
Overall, it is a unique driving experience. For commuting as much as 150 miles, I don’t think that ownership would not be much different from a regular car – the primary difference being a long nightly charge in the garage rather than a weekly fill-up.
There are distinct differences when it comes to long distance travel, like my dive trip example. On the drive back from Islamorada to Orlando, I took the toll roads and drove non-stop with only one 20 minutes break for gas and to take a leak. I was home in about 5-1/2 hours. My friend and his wife had to stay on I-95 to charge his car 2x; once in Miami, and again in Port St. Lucie. Their trip took all day.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this report!
I’d like to know, though, how the range is affected by continuous driving at say 75 MPH with the AC (or heat) on. And whether not “hyper-miling” it significantly affects the range for the worse.
I really would like to give it a fair shake. But they haven’t sent me one.
I have driven a Nissan Leaf. That car was so badly gimped by its short range that I regard it as unusable except as a close-in city car.
Hi, Eric!
That [Leaf] was so badly gimped by its short range that I regard it as unusable except as a close-in city car.
“Close-in city car” is all “they” are going to allow us to have soon. “They” don’t want any of us serfs to be traveling anywhere outside of the cities, which is where they can jam us together like sardines and control us like animals. They’re not even really keeping it a secret anymore.
Wake up and smell the diss topia!
I can kind of imagine future Houston. Same 6 million, but now we’re all packed into the inner beltway which is smaller than the Bronx instead of being spread over a metro area larger than the entire state of New Jersey.
Reeeeeee!
The Earth has been raped. She needs time to heal you evil white patriarchs. Get in your designated inner beltway safe space mansplainers.
((( Chanty Binx – really makes you want to stop manspreading your homes and yards and patriarching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVuK44kWgxk )))
Now gibs me 80,000 doll hairs so I can gib me dat BS in Feminist Civil Engineering I’ve been wanting to enroll in. Don’t be a bunch of deadbeat homeland Dads.
Spoiler alert. Full disclosure. I would totally have sex with her even if the whole time she’s yelling exactly like that, even with the megaphone.
Hi Lib,
Yes. And they are open about it, now.
They spent decades talking up the need to “clean” the exhaust of cars. Well, the exhaust is clean. It is not enough. So now cars must also not emit “greenhouse” gas – which they cannot stop emitting. Salt this with mandates that cars average 50-plus MPG at the same time and – voila – the end of the internal combustion engined car.
Its replacement? For those who can afford it, a limited-range electric car.
Looking for a propane kit for the pickup. Gotta have home and tractor fuel(well, maybe not, might just dig a hole and start a fire in the center like before fireplaces). Oh well, health care is nearly too high so our time is limited by that. My neighbor is a “pumper”, takes care of oil wells and collection facilities, etc. Maybe he can throw me a bone(gallon of white gas).
and for we who cannot, bicycles.
Bicycles will be eliminated if they are successful. Too much freedom. If I relied on a bicycle for daily transportation my range would probably be 30-40 miles. I could reliably function in a 10 mile radius. It would take time but I could still get much further from home than would be liked.
Liberrantor: Out her in California, in 2008 Gov. Schwarzenegger signed into law Senate Bill 375, which mandates high-rises and mass transit for non-billionaires. That’s why a decent house now costs upwards from $700,000. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger flies around the world in private jets attending “climate-change” conferences. I also see a lot of Teslas in coastal Orange County, showing it’s trendy among the wealthy enviros.
Even when there are charging stations, there aren’t nearly enough to cover any significant number of automobiles.
Just south of Denver is the Park Meadows Mall. This is a very trendy mall, with Apple and Microsoft stores, the sort of clothing shops that blast fragrances out into the hallway and free samples at the food court. We’re way out of our element here, but at least the scenery is pleasant to look at. Thank God for the guy who rebranded pantyhose as yoga pants.
Anyway, inside there’s a Tesla “showroom” (don’t call it a dealer), where you can sit in their cars, chat up the… well, not salesman, but whatever he might be called, and view triptychs of all the other wonderful gadgets and gewgaws spewing from Elon’s fertile mind. By virtue of having a showroom on premises, there are a few Tesla Superchargers™ in the parking garage. When I say “a few” I mean about 6 although I’m counting from memory. I’d estimate about 500 parking spaces in the garage and another 250 surrounding the building. And this is a very popular mall. So let’s say that works out to about 0.008% of the parking stalls have the ability to recharge your Tesla. And only your Tesla, BTW. Seems to me if they wanted to sell millions of these things they’d be taking some of that VC and IPO (and second offering, convertible note, and Model 3 pre-order) money and putting it into lots of charging stations. And they’d go with the standard “J1772” connector instead of a proprietary Tesla-only plug. The only time I couldn’t refuel my petroleum powered automobiles was the time I tried to fill up the TDI from the “big rig” pump by accident. Subsidize the charging stations, hell, give ’em away and get millions of them out there and then we’ll see about buying one of your cars.
Yes, it’s the classic “chicken and egg” dilemma. But instead of trying to do something about it that makes sense, sell a bunch of hype and promises. Seems to me if I had money to invest in electrics I’d be backing a charging station franchise, not a carmaker. Especially with all the announcements from the other car manufacturers lately.
I can never look at the Tesla emblem again without seeing a little person hanging on a cross. Why is the top bar not solid, like the top of the letter “T”? It distinctly has a separation, showing arms and a head hang beneath the top bar. Ok, so maybe it isn’t a cross, it it a yolk. Well. that certainly doesn’t bode any better, does it? Perhaps it is a high voltage transmission tower, but these cars don’t run off of high voltage overhead catenary wires do they? (oh, oh……another real word that spell-checker doesn’t know “catenary”) I would love to see how sexy this car would look with a great big high voltage pantograph sticking up in the air!
(apparently the word “pantograph” doesn’t exist in spell checker either) Why does the buying public completely ignore the symbols that their favorite products employ? You can bet your sweet ass that their marketing is no accident, nor a coincidence. The spell check is another example, while I’m at it. I have a vast vocabulary, which seems ordinary for me to use, especially in my chosen profession. And yet, nearly all the words I know, save the more recent internet additions to our “language”, can be found my 1989 Webster’s Dictionary. It is almost as if on-line composition and journalism is being purposely struck dumb. Well, Eric, it appears this last statement is the answer to your question here. Anyone not posing as biased supporter of today’s propaganda, automotive trends included, is to be systematically, and methodically silenced.
I don’t think their plan is going to work, do you?
Hi Graves,
I’d like to commission an artist to glaze Elon’s face on the inside of my toilet bowl….
yeh, with the big surprised “O” look.
The poor ability of my Mac’s spell checker has actually improved my grammar and creative writing ability. Instead of trying to get the proper spelling of a word I try to come up with a good simile. Or just type it into Google, which is about the best spellcheck there is.
gtc, a yolk, exactly, the perfect symbol. I realize I don’t have a good enough paying job to throw money away, yours and mine(mostly yours)on a Tesla. I only get to support those who do.
If I wanted Tesla buyers to pay for the difference between what their income and mine….so I could afford things I like, I suspect they wouldn’t be too receptive. They’d tell me in short order I should have a job that pays better and I’d say the same to them…..if I could. But the laws aren’t written for them to support my desires….not needs, desires….and dreams, stupid frickin dreams but dreams no less. The law is made so work that they could neither do or would do….cause my work is going to be at least(on the books)14 hrs a day, and work few of them could physically do much less have the knowledge to do, something they’d laugh at, but only if they had the option to laugh at it. If they were forced to support my “dreams” and “desires”, I suspect they wouldn’t be too happy.
I’ve explained to Prius owners this very thing. They don’t want to hear it. We don’t make anybody support anything. Oh yes, but because you will buy one of these pieces of shit you are supporting it no matter that your representative in the federal govt. chooses to give you a break and not me, somebody with a decent head on their shoulders and not have had a hand out my whole life. You support the entire ripoff industry by buying into it. If everyone refused, “EV’s” and “hybrids” would simply be something the car companies had tried to make work but couldn’t. People don’t refuse because of my tax money that make “their” dream affordable……for them.
I’m sure I’ll soon need to be “learned up” on hybrids since there’s so much demand for them in the “real world”. It’s nice I don’t have to crank up that big 20 liter diesel just to load that dozer or trackhoe or backhoe or WTF it is that performs some duty in life. I just hit the battery only part of it and ease that old dozer on the lowboy. I guess that’s the reason Cat went to the idle or WOT choice a few years back. You can mosey around on one on idle but when it comes to work it’s WOT with a deacceleration pedal or nothing.
Of course “hybrids” will soon be common, just like with big rigs. Even frog face has no “hybrid” big rig instead touting that pie in the sky EV rig that will have great range and huge power. Hey, it’s right there on YT along with automated operation. Why did an operator get in the rig if it’s automated? hmmm, shows him up in there playing games. Surely he’s not really watching cams and technical info…..and that stray eye out to see it’s staying on the road.
This stuff will someday exist in some form no doubt, just not yet and not in present mode. And I don’t want to pay for somebody’s “dream”…..but I don’t get a choice……eh?
Yoke, not yolk. I had to scroll back up and see if gtc misspelled it and he did but this correction is for both of us.
About two years ago the Frito chip folks decided to get all Portland Wierd and Green, and put a couple of full electric one ton hoopie box trucks into local Portland Oregon chip delivery service (no, not REAl chips, the wood chips hauled about for pulp mills, I mean what the Brits would call “crisps”) They’d toddle along about about fifty on the interstates when traffic permitted, and toward the end of the say as their battery packs dwindled, they’d barely keep up with the slow stop and go rush hour madness. In the cold of winter they REALLY went slow. Haven’t seen them at all this year. I rather suspect they had real diesels put into them and are back on the road working for reals these days. SIlly people.. “green” ain’t always great.
Hi T,
Nor is it always “green,” either!
Electric vehicles simply produce their emissions elsewhere. Bu whether they come out of the tailpipe or smokestack, they become part of the “air we breathe” regardless.
Cue “triggered” response.
Thing is even modern power plants are very clean. That said not bothering with pollution controls and displacing pollution on the poor is something our betters believe in.
“catenary”is a contraction for the phrase “the cat that ate the canary”.
“pantograph” is a device that measures and quantifies your breathing rate when exercising heavily.
I turned spell check OFF on all my devices.
The symbol for Tesla is a section of the electric motor armature I believe .
The symbol for Tesla should be the testes!
Freshly gelded no less.
Here’s what our shill Dave doesn’t want you to hear:
The Model S is sized like a midsize luxury sedan, and it’s priced like one, too. Why doesn’t anyone call the Model S a midsize luxury sedan?
Simple: because Tesla doesn’t want them to.
Tesla has fought incredibly hard for media sources to consider the Model S a full-size luxury sedan, for one simple reason: Its sales numbers aren’t as impressive if you compare it to more accurate rivals.
The Tesla Model S Is Absolutely Not the Best-Selling Luxury Sedan in America
https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/the-tesla-model-s-is-absolutely-not-the-best-selling-luxury-sedan-in-america-258097