I have used it several times. Worked fine. It is in beta. This is very clearly indicated. It also clearly states that you are responsible at all times to safely use it. You have to continuously hold the button. Releasing the button causes the car to stop immediately. If your car hits a curb, another car, or a building, you are a moron. The car that was struck by another car, well, that could have happened even if there were someone behind the wheel. In fact, that happens all the time. Bottom line: Beta. Morons.
Got my first power bill representing a full month of usage after having the Tesla. It's two dollars less than the previous month. It's been just about the same temperature outside, so my AC usage should be about the same. Obviously something is different, but not much. The car seems to have not contributed significantly to my power bill. I only put about 10 miles a day on it, so I wasn't expecting much. I spent about $30 a month on diesel when I was driving the Jetta, and I calculated that the cost should should be about half to drive the Tesla (in terms of fuel). Seems it's even less than that. I don't drive enough miles to make up the difference between fuel and car payment, but that wasn't part of the purchasing decision anyway. Still loving the car, and do not regret the purchase.
I have a friend in Savannah with a 3 that she can't take to Germany, so she's selling it. $46K. She also has a 2007 Suzuki SV650 that so far she has an offer of $1000, hoping for a bit more...
Hoot, when I bought my Diesel I did the math on cost vs. a gas engine. Iirc it would take 25k a year for the life of the loan to break even. Then the price of diesel and gas went up, then gas went down but diesel didn't in proportion. Messed up my numbers. By then, however, I'd found that other factors were more important than simple economics. Torque, ease of operation, that wonderful transmission, and feel made the choice worthwhile.
It's a car. Not just numbers. There are aspects hard to convey that make a big difference.
Technically, since politicians are a renewable resource, burning them for electricity fits the California Mandate.
Realistically, they would require processing to evaporate most of the water, ( which could be done, carbon free, with Solar, by staking them out in the desert ) to burn efficiently. And inevitably, there would be protests by environmental groups over any new program that actually works.
This sounds damning, especially the part about hiding the foundation, 14 feet deep, by demolishing the top 4 feet then covering it with dirt, creating an area where trees can't grow with sufficient root structure to survive a normal wind storm. ( thunderstorms or snow storms are not just common, they are guaranteed )
But the decommissioning costs of a coal fired power plant must be many times that. Not just because of the large buildings with massive foundations to support the boilers, turbines, and conveyed belt systems, but also the coal & slag piles that leach highly toxic chemicals into the ground. ( most were built before any environmental regulations on isolating them from ground water )
I notice the local plant has taken a long time to clean up.
The comments are most interesting. Amateur industrial archaeology is not rare in Rochester, as we have numerous late 19th & early 20th century abandoned industrial places to ( very dangerously ) explore.
I haven't been inside the Beebe plant since a class visit when it was in operation, but I have explored the surrounding areas, including a survey of radiation hazards at the slag pile. ( which was hot enough to make camping overnight a Bad Idea) ( in contrast, the local nuclear plant has no detectable radiation above background anywhere on publicly accessible land, or on land now completely ( since 9/2001 ) blocked off that was legally forbidden, but I may have wandered on accidentally, with radiation monitoring gear for a paper written in the early 1980s )
The Beebe plant is directly on the river, in a deep gorge in the literal heart of the city, next to a fairly spectacular waterfall. The High Falls sign in the article refers to the very expensive attempt to create a tourist & business renaissance in a pretty run down part of the city. Partially successful, some building have been renovated and have spectacular views from their windows, and while restaurants struggle ( As always ) to survive there, it's a worthwhile place to visit, with an old train bridge now a pedestrian one with great views. In the 18-19th centuries mills using the hydro power to process grain, gave Rochester the title Flour City. ( since changed to Flower City, long after the mills shut down, and we have a popular Lilac Festival so the revised title isn't wrong )
I spent years working in the area, after years playing urban Indiana Jones in the industrial wasteland & abandoned public works downtown. Between the two avocation & vocations, I've explored miles of underground tunnels, a lot still in use to supply banks and business unobtrusively.
And years of mountain biking both on park trails and beyond into unexpectedly urban wilderness in the river gorge has taken me to places few have seen for over a century.
A memorable experience is having police, seriously, insist we can't ride our bikes in locations, while we apologize for doing so, and then the police insisting we CAN'T ride our bikes there, so how the frack did we get there? More apologies for unknowingly breaking the rules. More, insisting we CAN'T ride there, so how did we get there, loudly & more angrily, before correcting the confusion between "must not" & "can not", by demonstrating that, indeed, we can ride over terrain the police thought impossible to even walk on.
Remind me to tell you about riding through 3 parks in the dark and accidentally riding through a laser light show about dinosaurs.
“And inevitably, there would be protests by environmental groups”
Of course, and rightly so. Politicians, even dead ones, are toxic and should be disposed of properly, not left to leach poison into a fragile desert ecosystem.
I’ll point out that the Tacoma Narrows bridge, though talked about, with circles and arrows, as it were, is not pictured in the video, and that it does not span a river, rather a section of Puget Sound. Although, when the tide is changing, it can certainly appear to be a river.
And that's how things SHOULD be done. If you're wrong, you don't simply shout down your opponent. You DISCUSS, you correct, and you take appropriate steps to make sure everyone knows the correct answers.
My climate is about to change quite a bit. Forecast today is for 80 degrees with a COLD front rolling in tonite, dropping to 25, with snow. Tomorrow's high will be near freezing with a low of 10-14.
How do you even have a valid discussion about global temperatures at this point, much less do any valid science? It's not even possible to tune a climate model to valid historical data anymore. It just boggles the mind to watch this happen.
As I often say, this kind of fraud makes people, properly, mistrust "scientists". "Wolf!" he cried!
a very disturbing event happened in Italy. Scientists were CONVICTED of negligently failing to properly warn about an earthquake that killed 309 people.
The prosecution was looking for a scapegoat, ( the history of that word? I'll get back to that ) someone to blame for the deaths.
Earthquakes, absent underground fracking/mining/disturbances, ( note 1)are natural events. Acts of Nature. Note the anthropomorphic implications of that phrase. The gods cause earthquakes!
The convictions are frightening from multiple angles. That not getting a prediction correct can get you prison time is going to discourage admitting you even have one.
That a judge would convict someone who tries to predict an earthquake, when it is not a mature enough science to reliably do so, and every educated non-idiot should know that, implied incredible stupidity and/or criminality negligent education.
The public official is like the Mayor in Jaws. Utterly incapable of scientific analysis of a threat, but determined not to ruin tourism.
This kind of religious nuttiness, & political blaming of anyone handy to create the illusion of competent public service, is literally cave man thinking. ( meets Machiavelli )
Note 1 ( A disturbance might be high water pressure from a full reservoir lake behind a dam, flowing into cracks created by the settling created by the enormous weight of the new lake. Lake Powell/Glen Canyon Dam is a prime example. With water in huge quantities creating a new aquifer and flow patterns deep underground.
If such a "leak" flowed into a fault line, major quake could result from lubricating the fault & pressure spreading cracks. This is fairly recent but not fringe science. Examples to date are related to glacial lakes in the Pacific Northwest, and man made lakes in CA. So far, we haven't "oiled and kicked free" a big fault like the San Andreas, but it's really possible. )
scapegoat [ˈskāpˌɡōt] NOUN scapegoats (plural noun) a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.
synonyms: whipping boy · victim · Aunt Sally · goat · fall guy · patsy
(in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16).
Will they urge the power company, a monopoly endorsed and exploited by State Government, to clear branches and brush in conflict with power lines? Offer incentives to bury power lines in high risk areas?
Apparently not. Better to black out life for people who don't vote in your urban districts.
If I understand this idea, it uses Special Relativity to loophole the Perpetual Motion Machine Fail, Conservation of Energy & entropy.
Not that a Perpetual Motion Machine based on this tech would work, not even close, and not the point.
The Big Fail in Perpetual Motion machines is the same Newtonian Physics Laws, as the theoretical impossibility of Reactionless Drives. And a Reactionless Drive is what is proposed here.