The question isn't if a Tesla is a great car. It's how screwed are we when the government forbids you to charge it.
Because they don't want to build more power plants, just give tax money to the rich people who own the wind and solar installation businesses. Which will make intermittent power some times.
That $120k electric with $80k in tax subsidies costs the consumer $40k plus tax increase. We all pay for part of your Tesla, and a little of My hybrid. $3k iirc?
So no, a $40k car isn't a $40k car.
Ducbsa, On a Toyota Rav-4 there's no alternator. 2 big electric motor-generators in the transmission. ( & 1 in the rear axle assembly ) Electric Water & power steering pumps. No belts.
Yes, the gas engine charges the ( on my year and model a nickel hydride ) battery. And/or spins the wheels.
The Old Top Gear crew roasted the Prius on "carbon footprint". Mining the Nickel, in Canada, ( asteroid strike ) shipping to China to be processed, then Japan to be put in batteries, then the UK to be sold. Same lifetime carbon footprint as a Land Rover Discovery.
Good thing I know carbon isn't the problem or I'd be concerned. ( same drive train mostly in the Rav-4 )
The Prius & Rav-4 Prime use a much bigger Lithium chemistry battery and electric motor-generators. Same gas engine. Plug in to recharge or just drive it & use the gas engine.
Mom's went a year without needing gas. ( which isn't good practice, the engine could rust, you want to use it occasionally. ) Better mileage, too.
The Tesla, otoh, no gas engine, just battery and motors. Much simpler, and more efficient.
My number is probably from Ford trucks. Haven't looked at the rebates lately, & I should. ( shopping for a Caravan replacement )
The bulk of my WAG of $80k includes tax incentives for the Corporation. Again, iirc, Ford & Chevy, while Stelantis? has a slightly different deal because Foreign companies.
Do you have a reference for the efficiency of Grid to battery, etc. Vs. IC cars?
Interested to read it. Imho, it's common sense that going from one form of stored energy ( burning stuff ) to boil water... Will get losses of various values, Vs. IC engines that have become very efficient in the last 20 years, ( offset by more massive cars to meet better crash standards, a lot ) Is a very close equation. But common sense can be wrong, and I certainly can be.
Battery useful life - 5 years? Maybe? True life is measured in number of charge cycles...but how long does your phone last? Smaller scale...but same tech. Eventually they don't charge anymore.
Temperatures. Below freezing, you lose approx 30% of your (already short) range. Below zero? More than half is gone. Use HVAC (heat or cool)? Dings your range. Noticably. You aren't running a compressor off an ICE (minimal parasitic draw), or a heater off ICE coolant... you're sucking power to run an portable heat pump. No connection to motive power.
Tires wear approx 2x faster due to curb weight. Brakes are worked harder for the same reason.
ZERO desire to drive one. Personally I think they're a scam.
Again - if they were so GREAT, the industry would have gone there, on its own, decades ago.
It didn't.
Because they aren't.
And for the record, when I mentioned the mining and manufacturing, etc, I wasn't speaking to the purchase price cost. I was referring to the overall, "save the planet", greenie, energy consumption required to do all that work. End-user energy consumption is only a fraction of the entire footprint. ICE is skewed towards the end user; EV skewed away from the end user. But I think total energy consumption, vehicle to vehicle, is MUCH higher for an EV. They just don't put that in the brochure is all. It's like windmills - MASSIVE amounts of concrete for the bases. MASSIVE amounts of fiberglass and composites for the blades. NONE of which, by the way, can be effectively recycled...and marginal (at best) intermittent power output. Solar? Same thing. Fragile, relatively short useful life panels made from expensive metals (lots of silver), not recyclable, and not consistent as far as power generation.
There's a reason the power (and automotive) industries went the way they did - path of least resistance, greatest results, and best profits. And none of them went to solar, wind, or electric vehicles.
It may not be fair to claim that total environment damage is worse for X or Y based on any single parameter.
For example, I don't think cow farts is a factor that should lead to government control of my diet. But I'm not in the religious cult that Does.
I think they're wrong based on 100% wrong predictions on climate for nearly half a century and more important, their dedication to the death cult of power stealing that has murdered more people than war, in the 20th century, alone.
Aluminum takes more energy to turn from rock to car chassis than steel. But both are highly recyclable. And the fuel savings, ( on board fuel cell, fossil fuel, biofuels, or off site Grid ) is better with a lighter chassis.
To switch gears to modern conventional bicycles, steel is used in niche market custom expensive bikes, and the cheapest Chinese junk. ( the precision and weight are Very different ) The technique and skill to make a frame from ultralight, ultra-thin wall tubing is far higher cost than water pipe heavy construction that can use robots and cheap labor.
Ditto, Aluminum tubing varies from second tier price high end bikes to midrange cheap, since there's a minimum level of skill and heat treating to make it functional. Again, weight tracks with price.
But the High Tier now is Carbon fiber.
And here the picture gets very fuzzy.
While some few very top price and quality carbon fiber frames are made in Italy, U.S., etc. The bulk are made in Taiwan ( really good ) and China ( varies from really good to junk ) using hand or robot laid fabric in molds.
The rationalization for exporting the manufacturing is labor cost and skill. While it DOES take skill to lay fabric carefully in a mold, the training time is much less than welding ultra thin steel. Most of the big companies use those Asian factories.
But molds wear. And get sold to companies that use less expensive materials and less expensive labor, to make cheaper and a bit heavier copies of the Western designs. Some are ok. Others not so much.
And it's not just used molds. You can buy a used, even broken top of the line bicycle, scan it, and make a serviceable mold with a CNC job shop. Reverse engineering a composite structure to the same weight and strength is not trivial, but if you're going to use cheaper materials, you just redneck copy everything thicker and hope that the customer doesn't sue before you've made a profit and moved on. ( different name company, same crew )
I'm not even talking about fake stuff pretending to be Nike or Colnago, this is internet sales with made up names like Foxlight.
After all, on the Outside, it's the same wind tunnel developed low drag shape as the $6-12 Thousand dollars European bike. Weighs a few pounds more and might break easy, but you can't tell that from pictures on AliExpress. Or Amazon.
That Expensive bicycle is probably made just down the street from the cheap knock off, but the company paid for all that engineering and marketing ( sponsor races, just like Chevy & Ford ) and for the Quality Control to keep the customer safe. ( ultrasound and X-Ray testing ) The knock off guys don't.
And mostly, although there are expensive repair shops that can fix an expensive carbon fiber bike, when they break and they wear out! They're not recyclable. ( one company is using recyclable plastic instead of epoxy in their new wheels, to be fair )
So you see how it's complex how big an environment impact can be.
Feel free to criticize whoever, but if I was on the Space Station, a thin beer can hull holding in my air, I'd want them to be very very sure that the attempt to reprogram the computer on the broken space capsule doesn't have it partly undock, ripping one of the segments open to space, or worse, unlatch & tumble into the station or hopefully working escape capsule.
It's looking more and more like it may be necessary to kill the electronics on the busted Boeing thing, manually unbolt the docking collar wearing a space suit, and man handling it to where the Canada arm can grab it, until they can design build test and ship up a custom reentry motor with it's own stability and maneuvering thrusters. Or shove it away by muscle power and hope that the computers don't slam it back into the incredibly fragile can of air.
And you can't boost the orbit with a loose mass hanging on the arm, so it's not just the stranded crew breathing air not accounted for, it's the whole thing burning up and rapid unplanned disassembly, with people on board.
You can't just kick it away in an Olympic leg press, since orbital dynamics means it's going to come back. Exactly as hard as you pushed it away, and not in a straight line.
NASA takes a lot of criticism for being risk adverse. But now is the time to be REALLY careful.
I'm not privy to the arguments that resulted in them sending the leaky capsule up despite repeated attempts and repairs on the ground.
Lots to cover. I will try to be brief. You cite several tropes about electric cars that, while fun to banty about, are simply not true.
Battery useful life - 5 years? Maybe?
My car is 5 years old. The battery has shown no signs of degradation. Newer battery construction/chemistry is even better.
Way below freezing temperatures: Yep. If you live in that environment, you should not buy a current generation EV.
AC/heat.
Running the AC costs 4 miles of range per hour of operation. You will find similar parasitic losses with internal combustion, as the pump puts a load on the engine. AC is not free, whether ICE or EV. Heat comes via heat pump. Similar loss. ICE has EV beat there, as you get waste heat from the engine. Key word there is waste. You are paying to create that heat; you just do not get to use it.
Tire wear. My car weighs a touch over 4000 lbs. A dodge challenger weighs 4200. Many cars weigh over 4000 lbs. Your car weighs over 4000 lbs. It is a large vehicle, and not in the same class as a midsize car, but if you are worried about tire wear, would you not be driving a tiny little honda?
Brake wear: You are WAY off base here. EVs use regenerative braking. The brakes last (figuratively) FOR EVER. The only scheduled maintenance on a tesla is cleaning the brakes, if you live in a place where they salt the roads. The brakes see such little use that they can seize up from the salt and the fact that they don't often get exercised.
Again - if they were so GREAT, the industry would have gone there, on its own, decades ago.
The industry did not go there because of inertia. ICE cars are quite advanced. Those engines benefit from decades of engineering knowledge and constant refinement. To create an EV that is any way competitive with a traditional vehicle costs an enormous amount of money. I dunno. Maybe if you were the richest guy in the world, you could pull it off. Or maybe you could become the richest guy in the world by pulling it off.
For the record, and I have said this repeatedly, I am opposed to government subsidies, tax credits, and penalties inflicted on ICE manufacturers for making traditional cars versus EVs. Forcing people into EVs is unamerican and wrong.
You are doing yourself a disservice by being so closed minded about new technology.
To paraphrase a certain motorcycle engineer: Just go drive the car.
Also, regarding cell phone battery life, the battery construction is not the same. Cell phone batteries are designed to last two years. We all charge our phones to 100 percent every day. Apple, and probably others, have introduced delayed charging in order to help preserve the battery. It does not hit 100 until morning, even if you plug it in at 9PM the night before.
With EVs, you do not charge to 100. You can occasionally if you need the range. And that is with lithium ion. Lithium iron phosphate can and should be charged to 100 percent. The standard range teslas use this chemistry. But the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, do not out drive a battery charged to 80 percent. They have plenty of range to do all the things they need to do all day. And when they leave the house the next day, they are back to 80 percent. No gas stations. No super chargers. No waiting. It is a shift in mindset from what we are all used to. With gas, you fill up completely, and run it to reserve. Not so with an EV. Just a different way of fueling. Getting fuel is not something I ever have to think about while commuting or getting groceries. I just take 5 seconds when I get home and plug in.
My understanding is that the helium leaks were determined to be at an acceptable level. Try to contain helium. I bet you cannot
The delays caused the capsule to blow though its helium. They did not account for the delays.
I do not think boeing is small enough or agile enough to build spacecraft any longer. Too much bureaucracy and people more concerned with politics than engineering.
My father retired from boeing. He said the merger with mcdonald douglas ruined the culture.
The folk at McDonnell Douglas said the same. Very different cultures. Ditto when Douglas & McDonnell merged.
The real pity, historically, is the McDac Blended Wing airliner project got axed by Boeing, who were fine with aluminum tubes with wings, & didn't want the potential game changer plus learning complex composites.
The brakes indeed get used, even in a Tesla. Regenerative braking fades ( steep curve ) to zero as the car approaches the stop. But they do last a long, long, time compared to regular cars.
And... The total system efficiencies, & the "eMPG" numbers, are complex and subject to cheating, depending upon what parameters you ignore.
The Top Gear guys claimed the Prius had an ( arbitrary ) life span carbon footprint roughly equal to a Land Rover Discovery, mid range luxury SUV.
Which is true. For values of truth.
My Mother's neighbor has a JDM Honda Atcy mini pickup, which I'm sure sips gas. Do we figure in the delivery ship? Depends what you want to prove.
I don't think we dispute the need for more Grid Power to charge cars.
Battery chemistry differences include power density and safety. The electric airplane experimenters may prioritize safety over mass/range, or vice versa. But they are going to use actually available batteries, or it becomes a garage filling hobby, not a working machine.
Seriously, I can feel the mechanical brakes kick in sometimes.
My next project bicycle will probably have regenerative motor setup. It's smart. My Catrike has it. But not braking! Just variable drag. Takes a well integrated system for comfortable regenerative braking, like a Tesla or Toyota.
I can too. You feel the regen stop about 4 feet from the stop, and then you feel the brakes come on. Remember that I am not pressing on the brake pedal, I am just taking my foot off the go pedal; the car comes to a stop. Stopping a car going 1 or 2 mph over a distance of three feet is nothing. The brakes never even get warm, let alone hot. The machining marks are probably still on the rotor faces LOL.
I just coast until a few miles an hour, then it only stops from friction, unless I apply brakes manually.
There's a setting for controlling that, but a Toyota stock don't auto stop.
Unless I'm on cruise control.
Not sure I'd like that stopping automatically. It's an option in one E-bike motor kit, to throttle only up and back throttle regen down, with a twist grip.
But some people freak with old school 1970s cruise control, they feel out of control.
I like two pedals, or even three. I like being in control behind the wheel, or at least feel as though I am in control. I will use cruise control sometimes, I'm cool with that. I'm less cool with total drive by wire vehicles. One pedal would make me feel very uneasy. If the computer makes a mistake you're in deep crap. If someone hacks your ride, you are at their complete mercy.
The brake pedal is there if you need it. But you do not. It decelerates in a liner and predicable manner. You would immediately feel it if something were amiss. Just go drive the car A test drive costs nothing.
SpaceX is doing all kinds of really impressive stuff. I'm not any kind of scientist, but I am a Science Fiction geek and actually watching the progress they're making is exciting. Elon Musk should change his name to Delos D. Harriman
This could lead to commercial fusion in 20 years. Just like they've been saying my whole life.
I have a conspiracy theory that the Soviets gave the world the Tokamak design because they had proved it won't work to keep us wasting money and sabotage the Fusion Research in the West.
Every time we build a bigger one, they say, it would work if it were bigger. No one seems to build one big enough, and the complexity keeps going up like a German Engineering team is involved.
This article above promises that a little one might work if they can simplify it.
I think if fusion were possible outside a sun or the center of a fission chain reaction, Elon Musk would have a startup revolutionizing the science. It is telling that he does not. You just know he has thought about it.
When "Long Covid" became another publicized reason to Obey The Glorious Leaders I was skeptical.
Now I know at least 3 people with it, repeated serious re-infection/relapses, serious chronic illness, needing days on ventilator to survive. Very Sick People.
Root cause seems to be a genetic inability to process out and eliminate spike protein.
Less clear is how bad the mRNA vaccines that cause the human body to produce spike proteins ( to stimulate the immune system ) are for those people with the inability.
A subject for research that needs attention by actual science, not political, is how effective, or useless, the mRNA vaccines are in those people. ( since all 3 I know have had multiple cases of apparently every variation of Covid-19 in North America. Despite repeated vaccination. )
Human variability is a Real Problem with drugs, and it's Early Days in getting a handle on that. Someday we'll have tests to determine which drugs work better with your specific genetics, but not yet.
And the REASON that there's never been a vaccine effective against "the common cold" is that Coronaviruses mutate rapidly and keep changing the exact shape and composition of the proteins that "latch onto" the cells.
The mRNA experimental tech seemed to offer a solution to rapid production of vaccines to prevent infection, with somewhat limited success. And some risks, and I don't know For Certain which risks are from the technology, and which from the spike protein chosen to stimulate, itself. ( maybe that's known, and I missed it )
Note that vaccines that Don't use mRNA tech to make your body produce it's own trigger proteins ( The old school type ) and just expose you to a protein segment in the shot itself, appear to work just as good as the mRNA ones. ( call it a "body hack" to make you a vaccine factory ) And just as ineffective against the newer mutated strains.
Anecdotal, but a close friend is in the clinical trials for the "moth protein" vaccine, didn't get the original deadly strain, but did get a later milder mutant strain. ( as did I ) Apparently, the traditional approach doesn't have the side effects of the mRNA "body hack" tech, but does have the potential side effects of any vaccine that may have an allergic reaction problem. ( many vaccines use eggs to make & can trigger folk with egg allergy, for example )
Again based only on personal experience, ( and millions of cases ) Not a big study, the difficulty in creating a vaccine for Coronavirus because of rapid mutations isn't yet solved.
Ironically... Just months before the escape and deliberate spread of Covid-19, a Team was working on a Universal Virus Vaccine that used the common virus body proteins, not the highly variable "latch" proteins, to stimulate the immune system to attack all viruses. Which would be an incredible achievement! And maybe incredibly dangerous?
Since at least the 1970's there's been rumors about universal antibiotics, and the reason they never pass trials, since killing ALL the bacteria ( Not viruses ) in the human body opens the patient up to every random bug that they are exposed to. That the normal resident bacteria out compete and prevent infections from. Much like suppressing the immune system for a transplant risks infections.
I got these rumors from Pharmaceutical insiders, ( relatives in the business ) and the fictional? Experimental drug was mentioned in The Andromeda Strain novel. There may indeed be such a drug in a vault freezer locked away, but it's never going to be released. ( it'll cure you! But then you're F$%#ed. )
I disagree that electric cars are underperforming vs. IC cars... in power, in sporty car thinking. In some holistic way? That's an argument worse to have than individual choice and suitability. My WAG is Yes, but.
But the comment that grid can't handle an all electric fleet is spot on.
Vat grown meat? ( 3D printed, etc. ) I agree, especially on motivation.
I find the tech interesting, and it's been in Sci-fi a century, at least.
I'm reminded of butter & margarine, Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. Natural vs. Artificial.
I still have my copy of "Marooned" on the shelf, by Martin Caidin, and remember Dad taking me to the movie. ( one of the last showings of mainstream movies at the historic downtown Monroe theater before it went Porn )
Despite complaints about NASA wasting money, their budget is tiny compared to a lot of other "stupid stuff to make jobs for relatives of politicians" programs. But I'm biased.
I'm not defending the Appointed Leadership, which I hold in contempt. And I'm against the current Mission of NASA, which by Obama's Executive Order is to make Muslims Feel Better about their contributions to Science. ( pre-medieval history project honestly ) And, of course, to lie about Global Warming.
But they do some good work there I think is important.
And subcontracting out building space craft is a good idea.
NACA, later NASA, is a science and tech development program. Experimental flying machines to advance state of the art. Not mass production of bombers or airliners!
One example is the laminar flow tests where NASA had a F8U Crusader ( supersonic gunslinger successful fighter ) re-winged with a system to suck the laminar airflow boundary layer through thousands of tiny holes. It "worked". But keeping dust and bugs from clogging the complex systems was impractical.
Failure? No. They did prove the idea that would let jet airliners get better economy was valid. ( and other planes, like bombers, but shhhh! ) And that the system tried was kinda dumb. Learning from mistakes is important.
I'm betting that a Real investigation into the Stranded Astronauts Debacle will show severe judgement and possibly corruption problems in NASA management.
But right now I'm more concerned about the lives in danger in space, today.
My frustration isn't helped by the repeated efforts to build escape systems for the ISS & other orbital flights, that never get the budget to be actually tested.
