OT: New Tesla Roadster

[cmg]

Originally Posted by alancw3

i guess sometimes in life it takes a leap of faith to move forward from the same old same old. as much as i like what elon musk has accomplished i still hold out for the hydrogen fuel cell as being out best alternative to fossile fuel.

tesla will have long run time before hydrogen becomes viable. 3rd party ev conversions kit manufacturers/vendors will spread across the country before hydrogen takes hold. even the Arcimoto a has better chance of coming to market. https://electrek.co/2017/01/05/acrim...three-wheeler/ hydrogen is another way to sell you fuel. with electric you have a better chance of generating it yourself.

[alancw3]

Originally Posted by cmg

tesla will have long run time before hydrogen becomes viable. 3rd party ev conversions kit manufacturers/vendors will spread across the country before hydrogen takes hold. even the Arcimoto a has better chance of coming to market. https://electrek.co/2017/01/05/acrim...three-wheeler/ hydrogen is another way to sell you fuel. with electric you have a better chance of generating it yourself.

you should read the book "car wars the rise and fall of electric cars and resurgence"

https://www.amazon.com/Car-Wars-Rise.../dp/1250048702

basically big oil screwed society on the future of fuel cell cars to preserve their fossil fuel market. if it had not been for big oil fuel cell cars would had been on the market in a big way 10 years ago i.e. tankage requirements and distribution. big oil wants nothing to do with distribution of hydrogen. think about how much big oil benefits from the usa on preserving fossil fuel in the middle east and how we the taxpayers are subsidizing it. when i read the book i was flabergasted at how they screwed society without society even knowing. READ THE BOOK it will make you cringe. we should have had methane distribution 10 years ago for fuel cell cars except big oil came up with some bogus excuse to require pressurized tanks and another fuel source as an obstacle.

[sand fungus]

My bet is that hydrogen is as viable and probably more realistic for heavy trucks. Toyota sells a hydrogen powered car in California and they already have a hydrogen powered truck running in the port of LA on trials. So it is as viable for trucks as Tesla Electric trucks. It takes 15 minutes to refuel that truck... It is really about the infrastructure. There is no hydrogen infrastructure, and making all trucks electric will require a huge infrastructure investment for electricity. If we assume one truck will use 500kWh per day if you multiply that by 100,000 trucks that is 50,000mWh. California capacity is only 70,000mwh with average demand of ~25,000mWh so if all those truck plug in at the same time total brown out... Then across the US There are 2.8M trucks in the US...

[alancw3]

[QUOTE=SoCalSteve;2264693]Very Bernie Madoff.

you may have had it right:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/18/...l-3-production

[Ti Designs]

Originally Posted by William

"Slow cars driven fast are always more fun than fast cars driven slow."

Well, there is that...

I have to question the need for ultra performance cars on the steet (this from a guy who has used NOS on his commute and is looking at an Ariel Atom as his next car) I just converted my car from autocross car to winter car, so the wide sticky tires got replaced with narrow snow tires, the boost is limited to 2 PSI and both cam and ignition timing have been tuned for low end throttle response. I've also have the links to the rear sway bar controlled by engine vacuum, so she has understeer off throttle ('cause the race car is a little tail happy). The difference in times of my commute to work between the race car and the winter car is zero. I'm feeling a little cheated...

[verticaldoug]

Tesla is definitively making interesting and fun cars, but whether they can get scale and make it profitably is still a question mark.

I think the limiting factor for full electric cars will not be the grid, but cobalt in the batteries. 50% of the world's cobalt comes from the DRC. A large amount comes from 3 mines- Mukundo owned by ENRC, Katanga owned by Glencore and Tenke which was recently sold by Freeport to the chinese.

Currently world production can supply maybe 6mm cars per year. (Current global production is 92mm cars per year). This explains why no miner was willing to supply Volkswagen when they tendered for a 5 yr supply of cobalt. And this ignores all the other batteries and uses for the metal. This also explains the price performance of the metal this year.

You can probably change percentage of cobalt in the battery slightly will maintain enough battery performance, but can you replace Cobalt altogether? If not, Houston, we have problem.

[RoadWhale]

Originally Posted by Ti Designs

Well, there is that...

I have to question the need for ultra performance cars on the steet (this from a guy who has used NOS on his commute and is looking at an Ariel Atom as his next car) I just converted my car from autocross car to winter car, so the wide sticky tires got replaced with narrow snow tires, the boost is limited to 2 PSI and both cam and ignition timing have been tuned for low end throttle response. I've also have the links to the rear sway bar controlled by engine vacuum, so she has understeer off throttle ('cause the race car is a little tail happy). The difference in times of my commute to work between the race car and the winter car is zero. I'm feeling a little cheated...

I like the way you commute!