Tesla

[DikTracy6000]

Anybody here own one of these or following the company? Company has almost a cult-like following similar to Apple a decade ago. It seems their early leadership in EV's has pushed ALL the other auto companies to play catch up.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Anybody here own one of these or following the company? Company has almost a cult-like following similar to Apple a decade ago. It seems their early leadership in EV's has pushed ALL the other auto companies to play catch up.

I follow them closely as they directly impact my industry. The Model S is a crazy good car. It doesn't really matter, as you can't run a car company on one amazing car, so they need the Model 3 to roll out successfully. They probably will, if behind schedule.

I'd had serious doubts about their ability to get fully autonomous (Level 5) vehicles operating, as it's incredibly hard to simulate all the scenarios a human driver runs into. But they're current hardware is in all their newer cars, monitoring all the human decisions in all road conditions, pegged by geography, so they've certainly got a huge advantage over Google or Uber's lidar systems. Musk just tweeted it the software will be rolling out in a few weeks. That's going to collect a ton of data.

The Chevy Bolt, the Model 3 competitor, is apparently a superb car, with fantastic range, but they'll be selling it at a loss at first. It's possible the Model 3 will be much better, we'll see.

All car companies have to move in this direction, as the batteries get inevitably cheaper. Nobody's going to want to pay a ton more for a gas car with poorer range and is more expensive to drive. Tesla just went first.

Autonomy may take longer. People will not tolerate fatal accidents with completely autonomous vehicles, even though humans have them all the time. Some kind of infrastructure changes may be required.

[Bud Charniga's grape ape]

Building out sufficient charging stations to make electric cars a sensible proposition for all but the most ardent early adopters has been tricky.

[DikTracy6000]

Building out sufficient charging stations to make electric cars a sensible proposition for all but the most ardent early adopters has been tricky.

The Musk vision is the roof, hood, paint, etc. will become some type of super solar array to recharge batteries during sunny conditions. Part pipe dream and part possibility. I think Musk's idea that his GigaFactories for batteries for home use will become the biggest star of his total vision. Other people talk about going 300 miles on a charge, and Musk is talking about going to Mars. I still haven't decided if he's for real and just a brilliant charlatan.

[bennyonesix]

I hate all Tesla cunts. I live in a super rich area and they are everywhere. One of them had left a coffee on the roof and was backing out and I stopped him and smiled and pointed to the coffee. He got out pissed and grabbed the cup and got back in without even a nod. Die. I am forever their enemy.

Trains are better than these electric cars anyway

[Bud Charniga's grape ape]

The Musk vision is the roof, hood, paint, etc. will become some type of super solar array to recharge batteries during sunny conditions. Part pipe dream and part possibility.

Maybe. For now you need charging stations. And there aren't enough of them.

I think Musk's idea that his GigaFactories for batteries for home use will become the biggest star of his total vision.

Maybe. There's definitely money in microgrids and SGIP -- the problem is, right now it's all government subsidies. Now, I have no problem with the government subsidizing promising technologies. That's the only way you're going to get most of these technologies to be anything more than some dude's cool idea. But there's no way of knowing which particular technology is going to pay off versus flame out (sometimes literally). Maybe someday we'll all have a MuskOx (tm) battery in our backyard. Or maybe they'll all blow up when it rains. Who knows?

I still haven't decided if he's for real and just a brilliant charlatan.

Little bit from column A, little bit from column B.

[Grandpa's Spells]

The Musk vision is the roof, hood, paint, etc. will become some type of super solar array to recharge batteries during sunny conditions. Part pipe dream and part possibility.

Maybe. For now you need charging stations. And there aren't enough of them.

I don't follow. home or work charging stations are where cars get their electricity, and that the range on these cars is 300 miles. And if you need to drive cross-country, the supercharging stations allow that. There's not shortage and charging stations are cheap and fast to build.

[buckethead]

All this is easy once you realize you're living in a simulation

[bennyonesix]

Kinda scary when people that powerful think nothing they do really matters

[Bud Charniga's grape ape]

The Musk vision is the roof, hood, paint, etc. will become some type of super solar array to recharge batteries during sunny conditions. Part pipe dream and part possibility.

Maybe. For now you need charging stations. And there aren't enough of them.

I don't follow. home or work charging stations are where cars get their electricity, and that the range on these cars is 300 miles. And if you need to drive cross-country, the supercharging stations allow that. There's not shortage and charging stations are cheap and fast to build.

I guess that's why people are complaining to the agencies that regulate electric car charging stations that there aren't enough of them. Maybe they're all wrong.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Srs question: where are these complaints being made, and what brand cars are the color mplainers driving? I'm unaware of what you're talking about.

[TerryB]

:nobody

[bennyonesix]

Ian I keep telling you I have the emojicons disenabled.

[DikTracy6000]

The Musk vision is the roof, hood, paint, etc. will become some type of super solar array to recharge batteries during sunny conditions. Part pipe dream and part possibility.

Maybe. For now you need charging stations. And there aren't enough of them.

I don't follow. home or work charging stations are where cars get their electricity, and that the range on these cars is 300 miles. And if you need to drive cross-country, the supercharging stations allow that. There's not shortage and charging stations are cheap and fast to build.

I guess that's why people are complaining to the agencies that regulate electric car charging stations that there aren't enough of them. Maybe they're all wrong.

They are very sparse in our state. One near Pittsburgh, one near Harrisburg, NONE in Philly, and not a one near my home. I think when EV's take hold, the gas stations will build them up the wazoo, since the money to be made at these places comes from serving food, quick serve lattes and soda.
http://www.teslarati.com/map/

[Grandpa's Spells]

They are very sparse in our state. One near Pittsburgh, one near Harrisburg, NONE in Philly, and not a one near my home. I think when EV's take hold, the gas stations will build them up the wazoo, since the money to be made at these places comes from serving food, quick serve lattes and soda.
http://www.teslarati.com/map/

Charging stations are for long-range driving where your home/office chargers are insufficient, because you are driving 300-600 miles a day, so you want them only in places serving those drivers, rather than where tons of locals can fuck up the system looking for a free 30 commute. You don't want them in Philly (or Chicago, or other cities). Zoom out, take a look at that map and see where you'd be unable to get from Philly due to a lack of charging stations. El Paso, maybe?

[Sangoma]

My wife test drove one a year ago and was very impressed. Not sure of the model - they obviously let you drive the most impressive one - but I remember it claimed to go from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.7 seconds. In addition the car is almost completely silent.

[Bud Charniga's grape ape]

Srs question: where are these complaints being made, and what brand cars are the color mplainers driving? I'm unaware of what you're talking about.

I work for the California Commission. I know we're hearing about it. I have heard second-hand that the other western states are hearing about it two. This is across cars. Tesla; Leaf; Volt; etc.

There are two problems:

1) Not everyone who wants to own an electric car can own an in-home charger or wants to own an in-home charger. Think apartment-dwellers.

2) If you're talking about taking the car on longer trips, it's not really sufficient to have charging stations merely within driving distance of your destination. You really want to have charging stations that are convenient to your destination and that are sufficiently numerous that you don't need to plan your trip around charging your car. Think about how we treat gas stations: for most drives, I can safely assume that I will find a gas station more or less when I need one. I don't have to plan in advance. If you own an electric car, you can plan in advance; in most areas you'll be able to reach a charging station before your battery dies; but it's not the same as being able to just get in the car and drive.

Charging stations probably don't need to be as ubiquitous as gas stations to make electric cars more popular, but there do need to be more of them.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Srs question: where are these complaints being made, and what brand cars are the color mplainers driving? I'm unaware of what you're talking about.

I work for the California Commission.

Got it. CA is different in most things automotive.

[TerryB]

Ian I keep telling you I have the emojicons disenabled.

[Freki]

I read a biography on him, started following him on the Twitter machine and reading everything I come across on him & the three, now two, companies.

I hope he succeeds wildly. Those shingle/tile solar panels they unveiled recently could be game changers. A new way of storing the energy needs to get worked out, cramming more and more lithium batteries into a unit peters out at a certain point.

But here's the thing, best summarized by Charlie Munger:

Q: What are your thoughts about Elon Musk [CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity] and what he's doing?

Munger: I think Elon Musk is a genius and I don't use that word lightly. I think he's also one of the boldest men that ever came down the pike. Put me down as saying I've always been afraid of the guy whose IQ is 190 and he thinks it's 250. I like to think there’s a little of that risk with Elon. He is a certified genius.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/phildemuth/ ... b263644ba5

Case in point: they always seem to be dancing on the head of a pin w/ delivery and their finances.

The book referenced is the one I read.

http://www.inc.com/business-insider/elo ... oogle.html

The thing was, as a public company, Musk was literally telling investors on a call/at a conference that everything was good, but talking to Google at the same time. Not sure that's 100% kosher.

[Turdacious]

Cheaper Chinese batteries may be a problem for Tesla. http://www.forbes.com/sites/bertelschmi ... a3d9f2c6e7

[DikTracy6000]

Cheaper Chinese batteries may be a problem for Tesla. http://www.forbes.com/sites/bertelschmi ... a3d9f2c6e7

I wonder who Chevy Bolt, BMW, VW, Audi, Ford and Chrysler will be buying their batteries from? Guess Google should be included in that list. I've got to believe that the evolution of the current lithium battery is akin to the Ford Model A. We need Christopher Lloyd working on this.

[Freki]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -for-tesla

[DikTracy6000]

Nice article on how Google/Waymo and GM/Cruise are way ahead on fully autonomous driving. If you scroll down article there's a video of GM doing a fully autonomous test in the streets of San Francisco.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4041691 ... block=true

Here's direct link to GM/Cruise's video of fully autonomous drive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RA4uR0s0dU

If you haven't followed this yet, Tesla has already settled on at least one death caused by someone having his car on autonomous driving. It seems the early models used sensors or cameras set at a height range and it didn't pick up the trailer of a flat bed due to the lack of cross sectional mass or a height miscalculation.

[Sangoma]

Ian I keep telling you I have the emojicons disenabled.

Terry B just undisenabled them. Now you have to disundisenable again.