Tesla Thread

[mikegarrison]

15 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

the complete lack of vigor required by the media

Professional news media has its own standards of rigor. They aren't the same as the court system, but they also are not non-existent.

Not everyone lives up the the expected standards, but that applies to the courts as well.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Just now, mikegarrison said:

Professional news media has its own standards of rigor. They aren't the same as the court system, but they also are not non-existent.

Not everyone lives up the the expected standards, but that applies to the courts as well.

You are correct of course - but the standards in courts and administrative proceedings is much more rigorous than the broad discretion allowed to the press under the First Amendment. 

https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/lawsuits-and-the-court-process/evidentiary-standards-and-burdens-of-proof/#:~:text=Evidentiary Standards in Criminal Cases&text=This standard requires the prosecution,or deduced from the evidence.

Example: Some people enjoy the use of 'alternative facts' transmitted through the media to sway the court of public opinion - when such unsubstantiated nonsense would be excluded from presentation to the jury in a court of law 

 

[mikegarrison]

The media is mostly self-regulated, of course. There are laws prohibiting maliciously lying, but the burdens of proof are quite high.

Like most things in life, trusting the media is a case of "buyer beware". The more reputable that the media source is, the more they have to lose if people start to distrust them. But the rise of political talk-radio and cable news channels has demonstrated that at least for some people, it is more profitable to tell them what they want to hear than to tell them the truth.

Edited February 21, 2022 by mikegarrison

[tater]

Been going almost an hour.

 

 

 

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Heh, first footprints on Mars may be from a robot. 

[kerbiloid]

Theodor the Robot.

[tater]

Edited down version of the webcast (23 min)

 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

The OCP VaultTec Black Mesa Tesla R&D facility.

One year ago.

 

Edited October 1, 2022 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

On 9/30/2022 at 8:13 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Heh, first footprints on Mars may be from a robot. 

I would argue that the first "footprints" on Mars have already been made by robots.

 

[tater]

First semis delivered.

[kerbiloid]

On 10/4/2022 at 10:57 AM, mikegarrison said:

I would argue that the first "footprints" on Mars have already been made by robots.

This is not footprints, only wheelprints, it doesn't count.

This one would count.

Spoiler

 

 

[mikegarrison]

Tesla apparently just fired at least 500 people from their Supercharger team. Which is ... odd.

Tesla had a huge lead in reliable, fast charging stations in the US. A *huge* lead. And they appeared to be going full steam into making this a core business selling services to all electric car drivers, rather than just a way to increase Tesla car sales.

Now what?

If Tesla abandons this field, certainly someone else will take over the charging business.

Edited May 3 by mikegarrison

[tater]

Some of the tesla reporters I follow have been saying the supercharging team has been bloated and inefficient. Apparently V4 and megacharger (semi) rollout has been very slow.

I don't have a tesla (yet), as my cybertruck reservation number is quite high. Buddy in Santa Fe got his VIN, so hopefully I get to drive one soon.

[DDE]

24 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Tesla apparently just fired at least 500 people from their Supercharger team. Which is ... odd.

Tesla had a huge lead in reliable, fast charging stations in the US. A *huge* lead. And they appeared to be going full steam into making this a core business selling services to all electric car drivers, rather than just a way to increase Tesla car sales.

Now what?

If Tesla abandons this field, certainly someone else will take over the charging business.

Australia's Tritium croaked about a week prior, you'd think they'd be too busy celebrating and planning to gobble up its market share.

[Jacke]

Tesla has hand-writing on the wall that is damning: Their first-mover advantage in EVs has evaporated.  Their market share is shrinking.  And EVs themselves have major issues and the future may be better for Hybrids or other designs.

Expect all sorts of rearranging of deck chairs before it's obvious to those not willing to see that the ship is sinking fast.

[tater]

It's not first mover advantage, they're the only decent electric for sale most places. As ANY companies manage to make vehicles they can sell at a profit (BYD? Anyone else?), the market share obviously goes down, it's to be expected. So far the US OEMs have functionally zero EVs, China has a bunch of players, and the startups are all selling noise level numbers of cars grossly below what it costs to make them (Lucid, Rivian, etc).

The auto market in general is in trouble because of the huge inflation the last 4 years.

FWIW, Tesla makes ~3X more per vehicle than Toyota does (~$8300/veh vs ~$2700/veh).

EDIT (for clarity), the Tesla vs Toyota vehicles is on vehicles, not electric vehicles. So Tesla is substantially more profitable per vehicle than Toyota selling ICE vehicles.

Edited May 3 by tater

[DDE]

14 hours ago, tater said:

Tesla is substantially more profitable per vehicle than Toyota selling ICE vehicles

The demand for Toyota vehicles is relatively unelastic

[RCgothic]

I'm completely unconvinced that hybrids are the way to go for most domestic vehicles. The round-cycle efficiency for synfuels is way less than direct electric, and if the plan is to keep burning fossils then that's bonkers.

The only relevant use cases IMO are vehicles that need the increased energy density for routine long hauls like trucks, and/or have necessarily tight margins like aircraft.

As much as I love my current petrol Mondeo, when it expires my next vehicle will absolutely be full electric (although not a Tesla).

[tater]

My next vehicle is a tesla, gonna drive my Rover into the ground until my cybertruck is ready I guess. I have many friends with teslas, and they all like them. Public chargers are an odd thing, everyone I know charges them at home. I think there's a big difference in use case for daily driving vs road trips, tbh. I think of "range" in terms of theoretical road trips, but realistically, long trips for me are few and far between, even though I live in a state larger than Poland (with only a couple million people in it). Farthest away I'm likely to drive in a day is maybe Taos, then charge there (RT to home is likely possible without charging, actually, RT is under 300 miles). We'll likely only ever have 1 EV, since my wife and I both like manuals, so we'll have a BMW M2 or something, plus an EV.

[PakledHostage]

The thing that irritates me about hybrids is that the designs are all so stupid. Why does a RAV4 family hauler need a better 0-100 kph time than an '80s super car? I get that electric motors have a lot more torque than a gasoline engine so it's not a completely fair comparison,  but it illustrates a point. 

Back in my '20s, one of the things we'd do on road trips was coast down hills in neutral to compute the power required to go terminal velocity for that hill (knowing the grade of the hill and the mass of the vehicle). The amount of power required to maintain highway cruising speeds was always surprisingly little.

Why, then, does a plug in hybrid version of the RAV4 need an engine with about 150 hp? A small fuel powered generator to augment the battery would be sufficient to give an electric powered SUV all the range you're ever going to need. Its ability to accelerate (for things like hills, or pulling out to pass another vehicle) is already demonstrated in its 0 to 100 kph time. It can run on the battery and electric motor with the small generator serving to provide enough power for maintaining nominal cruising speed. 

A friend of mine works for a company that makes fuel cell transport vehicles (busses and trucks). Their design basically works as I have described.  The fuel cell provides electricity for the vehicle's electric motor via a battery buffer. Those vehicles can drive off the battery alone; the fuel cell just augments the range. If I could buy a car with that concept that's big enough for my family, I'd buy it tomorrow. I instead, I wait and hope.

[StrandedonEarth]

15 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

A friend of mine works for a company that makes fuel cell transport vehicles (busses and trucks). Their design basically works as I have described.  The fuel cell provides electricity for the vehicle's electric motor via a battery buffer. Those vehicles can drive off the battery alone; the fuel cell just augments the range. If I could buy a car with that concept that's big enough for my family, I'd buy it tomorrow. I instead, I wait and hope.

I still think the optimal concept would build off of battery-swap tech. Have a smaller built-in commuter-range battery coupled with a flexible, standardized swap bay that can hold a swappable module that can be a cargo tote, another battery, or some sort of generator or fuel cell, as needed.

[DDE]

29 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I still think the optimal concept would build off of battery-swap tech. Have a smaller built-in commuter-range battery coupled with a flexible, standardized swap bay that can hold a swappable module that can be a cargo tote, another battery, or some sort of generator or fuel cell, as needed.

Certification, maintenance and driver acclimation to each of these modules could be a serious problem.

[RCgothic]

What's the worst thing someone could do with a loose fully charged battery?

That's basically the problem with hot swappable battery packs.

Edited May 4 by RCgothic

[Terwin]

38 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I still think the optimal concept would build off of battery-swap tech. Have a smaller built-in commuter-range battery coupled with a flexible, standardized swap bay that can hold a swappable module that can be a cargo tote, another battery, or some sort of generator or fuel cell, as needed.

Google says that up to 25% of EV mass is the battery, and 25% looks like a good estimate when I spot checked a couple vehicles(model 3: 26-27%, Cybertruck: ~24%).

I cannot imagine that 'swapping out' ~25% of a multi-ton automobile is something that either automotive engineers or public safety officials would find appealing, or even tolerable.

That is entirely ignoring the fact that a newer battery is worth much more than an older battery and that anything with that much power density *will* be explosive if it is mishandled.

The fact that merely puncturing a battery with the currently favored automotive battery chemistry will start fires/explosions is probably a consideration as well.

 

note:  v8 engines weigh 400-700 lbs, so this is similar to swapping out the engine multiple times to fill the fuel tank.

Edit:

This is also ignoring that a lot of EVs look like they are incorporating the battery hardware into the undercarriage super-structure to improve handling and reduce weight/cost, making a swappable BEV even more of a premium item than current BEVs)

Edited May 4 by Terwin

[mikegarrison]

5 hours ago, RCgothic said:

What's the worst thing someone could do with a loose fully charged battery?

That's basically the problem with hot swappable battery packs.

What's the worst thing a person can do with a five gallon can of gasoline?