The Tesla Put

[metalman]

Re: The Tesla Put

True enough, but does PCO justify Tesla; I don't think so. We need to adapt b/c of PCO, so let's all buy $100k electric cars?

How much energy does it take to produce and maintain a Tesla through it's lifecycle I wonder?

pco justifies a diesel hybrid that gets 256mpg... goes 1900 miles on a tank of fuel.

quebec to florida city, fl... 1812 miles with fuel to spare.

explain to this poor soul... how can an ev compete with this?

on the quebec to florida city route the biggest tesla battery pack needs 7 recharges @ 2 hrs each... if supercharges are available on that route... they are not.

oh, yeh. you can go screaming fast between those 2 hr breaks.

[charliebrown]

Re: The Tesla Put

If tesla "blows up" does space-x? Or is space-x too big to fail?

[swgprop]

Re: The Tesla Put

the Twin-Up accelerates from 0 to 37mph in 8.8sec, 0-62mph in a sedate 15.7sec

I think I'll wait for something that can at least get out of it's own way ...

[santafe2]

Re: The Tesla Put

I think I'll wait for something that can at least get out of it's own way ...

And that's in hybrid mode...god help you in electric only.

[metalman]

Re: The Tesla Put

I think I'll wait for something that can at least get out of it's own way ...

twin up vs jogging fat man...

vs

fat man is faster to 10mph but twin up has higher top speed!

point being... if an underpowered diesel hybrid can deliver 256mpg & 1900mi/tank a full powered one can deliver 100mpg & 1000mi/tank.

tesla killer.

[photon555]

Re: The Tesla Put

It sounds like Tesla needs to provide an "oil fired option" for their vehicles to be used in cold climates. The diesel in the twin up would probably fill the bill. It could power a small generator to extend the range and provide heat for the passengers and the battery pack in cold weather. An all in one unit combining engine, generator, and fuel supply could be designed to fit under the hood or trunk, and installed or removed as necessary. It would certainly take less hassle and time to swap out than snow chains for tires. Perhaps two could be installed in the same car if driving non stop was desired.
I continue to think Tesla will endure. Whatever the reality, the perception will drive Tesla's success.

[don]

Re: The Tesla Put

With GM recalling virtually every car it has made since emerging from bankruptcy, another maker of flaming paperweights has quietly managed to slip through the cracks of public attention. So it was perhaps well-timed, if only for GM, that over the weekend we not only learned, but saw footage, of what happens when a Tesla is involved in a Police chase that results in a lamp post crash. Nothing short of complete obliteration. "a stolen Tesla involved in a fiery crash split into two following a pursuit that ended in West Hollywood early Friday, leaving seven people injured, police said. The incident began when police received a call from a Tesla dealership stating that an individual was “tampering or messing with” one of the vehicles, according to Sgt. Campbell with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Pacific Division. Officers responded to the dealership and a pursuit began at about 12:45 a.m., The good news, if only for Tesla car snatchers, "during the pursuit, the Tesla reached speeds of up to 100 mph. “There were fires after that that broke out,” Eric Martinez said. “I saw the firefighters — like 25 firefighters – standing around the white car with the Jaws of Life.[/B]” Martinez added that at one point, explosions could be heard.“We originally thought it was fireworks. Everybody thought it was fireworks that were just exploding,” [/B]he said.The Tesla sure did not go quietly: in total, the Tesla collided with four vehicles, injuring a total of 6 victims, before splitting in two, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.But the best news for the flaming paperweight: not even the driver managed to die.The man driving the Tesla — who was ejected from the vehicle — was originally thought to have died, but he was resuscitated while en route to a hospital, according to a Sheriff’s Department news release. Two LAPD officers were injured during the pursuit when their vehicle hit the center divider, according to LAPD Officer Bruce Borihanh. The officers complained of pain and were taken to a local hospital, Borihanh said, adding that they were later released and did not sustain injuries.Tesla Motos, Inc. seemingly unable to grasp how its car could i) split in two and ii) proceed to explode in a fiery wreck, has said it wants to study the remnants of a stolen Model S sedan that split in half and burned after a high-speed chase and collision in Los Angeles."We’ve asked to take a look at the vehicle as soon as that’s possible,” Simon Sproule, a company spokesman, said in a phone interview. “There aren’t so many S’s involved in major crashes, and certainly not quite like this one, so we absolutely want to have a look to understand what happened.”Indeed, a post mortem investigation is probably not a bad idea. And furthermore, if anything, recalling all those tens of thousands of Model S cars sold is probably not such a bad idea. After all just look at GM - after admitting its work product was absolutely abysmal, and the company didn't care about the lives of its customers if it meant higher EPS, resulting in nearly 30 million recalls in 6 months, GM managed to sell more cars in June than any time since Lehman.

[don]

Re: The Tesla Put

Corporate Welfare Queen, Tesla Motors

by Wolf Richter • August 13, 2014

Tesla is famous for building stylish, zero-emission electric cars in small numbers – by now maybe 3,000 in a good month against global auto production of over 6 million a month. Loaded, the Model S stickers for over $100,000. A cool, “green” car for wealthy people.

And it’s not necessarily a reliable set of wheels. No one really expects it to be. The company is still learning the ropes. Designing a car is the easy part. Making and selling them in large quantities for a profit is much harder – an impossible feat so far for Tesla. And making cars where every little thing holds up for years while in daily use, the Holy Grail for automakers?

Edmunds has been testing a loaded $105,000 Model S for over 30,000 miles. During that time, the car developed along list of major and minor problems. Among them, the “drive unit” – the motor in regular cars – had to be replaced not once but twice. The most expensive part of the car, the battery, had to be replaced as well. And there were some “unresolved” mystery problems, like windows that lowered automatically.

Consumer Reports – which had fawned over the car previously – is having second thoughts after driving it for 16,000 miles. It had “more than its share of problems,” the statement said, according to Reuters. Among them: “the center screen went blank, eliminating access to just about every function of the car.”

And when a stolen Model S crashed during a chase, it split into two and ejected the driver. One half of the car burst into flames. This just isn’t supposed to happen with modern cars.

But hey, give Tesla a break. It hasn’t had a chance yet to go search for the Holy Grail of auto manufacturing. However, there is one area beyond manipulating its stock price into the stratosphere where Tesla, which has been hemorrhaging cash since 2003, excels: sucking money out of investors and taxpayers.

Buyers get the federal electric-car tax credit of $7,500. In California, they get an additional $2,500 tax rebate (until funds are exhausted), for a total of $10,000, available only for buyers wealthy enough to buy a Tesla. Other states have similar programs. These taxpayer funds, in effect, subsidize the company. Without them, Tesla would have to cut its prices to compete with gasoline powered luxury cars – and it would hemorrhage even more cash.

If Tesla ever manages to sell 50,000 cars per year in the US, the federal subsidy alone would amount to $375 million per year. Plus state subsidies! And if its wildest dreams come true and it can sell 100,000 vehicles per year in the US – still puny, in our 16-million vehicle market – state and federal subsidies would approach a cool $1 billion per year.

Tesla has benefited from other welfare programs as well, including a loan of $465 million in 2010 from the DOE, which Tesla paid back in May 2013 after its hype machine attracted $1 billion in a stock and debt offering.

Now it’s hunting for more taxpayer subsidies, bigger ones, all over the US, for its “gigafactory” that is supposed to make batteries for Tesla’s less expensive future model. Tesla claims that the $5 billion plant will employ 6,500 people. And the California government – along with the governments of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas – is pulling out its wallet: The new tax break could reach $500 million, or $77,000 per job.

Not that Tesla is the only corporate welfare queen currently trying to stick it to Californian taxpayers. The LA Timesreported:

With almost no debate, the state Assembly on Monday unanimously approved a nearly half-a-billion dollar potential tax credit for Northrop Grumman Corp. should it win a new Air Force bomber contract and build the aircraft in California.

This is a sister bill to a similar one for Lockheed Martin and Boeing which are bidding the same $55-billion endlessly ballooning bomber contract. Gov. Brown signed that bill in July. However, no one has yet explained to Americans in California or elsewhere why the heck we need to blow $55 billion – and likely much more – on another bomber….

Be that as it may, for that $500 million in tax incentives spread over 15 years, Northrop promised to create 1,100 jobs in California, at a cost to California taxpayers of $454,000 per job. By comparison, Tesla is outright cheap.

Very ironically for a company that hypes its “green” credentials and products – coal-powered cars? – at every opportunity, Tesla is also demanding to be exempted from the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA. The statute requires state and local government agencies to review development projects, and if they find threats to the environment, suggest ways to mitigate or eliminate any potential damage. It was put in place by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1970!

“It would help them speed the process,” explained State Senator Ted Gaines, a Republican, after he’d met with Tesla executives, according to the LA Times. He and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, coauthored the Tesla incentive bill. And so the office of Gov. Jerry Brown is feverishly negotiating with Tesla over waivers for big portions of the CEQA, Gaines said.

Tesla wants to skip or limit the strict pre-construction environmental reviews of its plans so that it can “start construction and mitigate any potential damage later,” the LA Times reported, based on “state officials who said they were familiar with discussions but not authorized to speak about them.” The laundry list also includes a limitation on lawsuits that might slow construction.

Lawmakers and the Brown administration are rushing to get this thing wrapped up before the end of the legislative session in August, Gaines said.

“Timing for the gigafactory is very important,” explained Tesla spokesman Simon Sproule. “So all five states in the running for the gigafactory need to demonstrate, among other factors, that they can help us deliver the factory on time.”

Tesla cracks the whip. California’s harried taxpayers jump through hoops. Environmentalists, the very people who’ve raved about Tesla, the builder of “green” cars, are unceremoniously shoved aside. And people clamoring for fairness – like David Pettit, an environmental lawyer, who lamented the two systems of law, “one for the super-rich, and one for the developer doing multifamily housing” – will be made short shrift of. No one is allowed to get in the way of Tesla.

Despite puny sales and big losses, Tesla’s market capitalization is $32 billion. GM, whose sales last quarter were 64 times higher than Tesla’s, is valued at $54 billion. But there is a reason: no one excels at hype like Tesla and the Wall Street machine behind it.

The game has been honed to perfection.

[don]

Re: The Tesla Put


FILE - This Aug. 1, 2014 file photo shows security guards at the gate to the site Tahoe Reno Industrial Center about 15 miles east of Reno, Nevada.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — To bring electric cars to the masses, Tesla Motors will use an expanse of desert where wild mustangs still roam for a factory that the company projects will crank out enough batteries to power 500,000 vehicles annually by decade's end.

Tesla chose Nevada as the site for the $5 billion facility, a person familiar with car maker's plans said Wednesday

Nevada's elected leaders still must deliver on the economic incentives they've promised, but if they do as expected, Tesla will open its massive factory at an industrial park outside Reno, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no official announcement had been made.

An announcement was scheduled for Thursday afternoon at Nevada's Capitol.

A state synonymous with gambling hit the jobs jackpot — Tesla has said the factory will employ about 6,500 people. That's a welcome jolt for a tourism-based economy particularly hard hit during the Great Recession.

Tesla's choice of Nevada over California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico takes it a big step closer to mass producing an electric car that costs around $35,000 and can go 200 miles on a single charge. That range is critical because it lets people take most daily trips without recharging, a major barrier to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

The "gigafactory," as Tesla calls the project, would bring the cost of batteries down by producing them on a huge scale. Its approximately 10 million square feet, equivalent to about 174 football fields, would be running by 2017. That is when Tesla hopes to introduce its Model 3,
At present, demand for electric vehicles is small.

Through August, automakers have sold just over 40,000 fully electric cars this year, up 35 percent from a year ago, according to the auto website Edmunds.com. Factoring in plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles still account for just 3.6 percent of all new car sales, a slight drop from last year. Still, government fuel economy standards that will require new cars and trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon are expected to drive sales.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval's office wouldn't comment Wednesday on the gigafactory news, saying only that he would make a "major economic development announcement" Thursday. A spokesman for Tesla Motors Inc., based in Palo Alto, California, said company representatives would be at the Capitol in Carson City for the announcement but offered no other details.

Sandoval has declined to discuss incentives he has offered Tesla. Based on CEO Elon Musk's public statements, the incentives likely total at least $500 million. The governor would have to call a special session of the Legislature to approve tax breaks, grants or other incentives of that magnitude.

This spring, Musk announced that the company would take the unusual step of spending millions to prepare sites in two states — or perhaps even three — before choosing a winner. The person familiar with Tesla's plans told The Associated Press a second site still will be prepared, in case Nevada is unable to deliver the incentives it has promised, or possibly to build a second factory.

Tesla has done excavation and other site-preparation work at the Reno Tahoe Industrial Center, where it plans to build the factory, but had not publicly committed to building in Nevada until it tested what economic incentives other states offered. The center is about 15 miles east of Sparks, a Reno suburb founded as a railroad town more than a century ago.

Aside from low tax rates and business-friendly workplace laws, Nevada offered plenty of sun and wind to generate "green" power. The industrial park is only about 200 miles along Interstate 80 from Tesla's lone auto assembly plant in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's also near a deposit of lithium, an essential element to produce the battery cells.

Competition for the factory has been intense among the states, which bid up their incentive packages in private negotiations with Tesla.
In California, where Tesla has its headquarters and manufacturing plant, the decision to build in the state next door stung.

"Tesla was using their business savviness to get states to compete against one another," said state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, a principal proponent of the project. "It's just that I felt California had the inside track given our history of working in partnership with Tesla."

[LorenS]

Re: The Tesla Put

We knew the effect of cold weather on electric cars thanks to EJ. Now it is starting to hit the main street media, and it will bi interesting to see how the stock reacts as the story is disseminated.

http://www.latimes.com/business/auto...#ixzz2wWphMXOq

The average EV battery range in AAA’s test was 105 miles at 75 degrees but dropped 57% to just 43 miles at 20 degrees

This is silly, 20 degrees is not cold. People don't commute at noon.

[BK]

Re: The Tesla Put

Anyone with a hybrid knows how big an impact cold has on MPG of hybirds.

There are several Tesla's that I see in my area almost every day. But, during the cold snap last winter the Tesla's were not to be seen anywhere. I think most Tesla owners (given there are only a total of approximately 100,000 customers ever) have several cars and can chose to drive a gasoline powered luxury car during the severe winter temperatures.

[jpatter666]

Re: The Tesla Put

Anyone with a hybrid knows how big an impact cold has on MPG of hybirds.

There are several Tesla's that I see in my area almost every day. But, during the cold snap last winter the Tesla's were not to be seen anywhere. I think most Tesla owners (given there are only a total of approximately 100,000 customers ever) have several cars and can chose to drive a gasoline powered luxury car during the severe winter temperatures.

Yep, just like my Miata. Fun to drive, fabulous on a sunny day, but completely impractical in bad or cold weather. Then I drive the beat-up, completely un-showy but very practical -- truck.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: The Tesla Put

A quick Google will show that your local auto parts store sells a wide variety of heaters to keep car batteries warm.
Subaru offers it as an option on their cars.
Aircraft batteries often have electrical heaters built into the battery case.
Temperature is important to chemical reactions.

[jpatter666]

Re: The Tesla Put

Just read an article on electric buses vs Tesla -- fits in very well with the TECI thesis.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...ing_buses.html

[LorenS]

Re: The Tesla Put

A quick Google will show that your local auto parts store sells a wide variety of heaters to keep car batteries warm.
Subaru offers it as an option on their cars.
Aircraft batteries often have electrical heaters built into the battery case.
Temperature is important to chemical reactions.

That works in the driveway only. Once you're on the road it's up to the batteries to provide all the power for the vehicle. Another common scenario is that cold is accompanied by snow and ice. So, it's 0 degrees F, you're running the defroster, have gloves on because your car can barely get the cabin to 45 Degrees F and you're stuck in traffic. Suddenly your xx mile range is completely consumed by heating the cabin and batteries in stop and go traffic. Meanwhile, the low friction environment means you're getting almost no energy from regenerative braking, so the stop portion of the traffic flow is not helping either.

Electric vehicles are still toys for the rich, but then most technology starts out that way. Maybe they will catch on, maybe not, but the government should keep out of this one.

When cops, soldiers and the president are relying on EV's for mission critical transportation I'll consider it for my family. You can always tell a stupid law by whom is NOT covered by it.

BTW EV's don't pay the fuel surcharge for road taxes. There could be a surcharge on all electricity delivered to an EV to cover road maintenance, (with a voluntary x2 if the electricity is generated by coal).