Tesla just a Tease?

[knucklehead]

Just saw one at my local foosball bar. It was owned by an investor. When he left for the night the car took off like a bat out of hell, but without any noise. Very stealthy for zipping around town and not grabbing the attention of the PoPo.

[kverges]

The Tesla efficiency calculations actually are impressive - I take back what I said, but I do wonder how they got the 110 watt-hours per kilometer figure. It is slated as having a 200 kw motor, so if it can roll along at 100 km/hr and use just 10% of that capacity, then it would use 20 kw-hours of energy to travel 100 km, or 200 watt-hours per km. So the motor must be able to run at about 5% of rated capacity to get the quoted 110 watt-hours per km figure. I remain skeptical that in the real world a driver would, on average, call upon only 5% of the power. If you go to average of 10% power or more, I suspect the Tesla does not exceed gasoline power. I woudl love to see real world results.

[Rich H]

Originally Posted by smicker

Tesla Motors - well-to-wheel
Tesla Motors - environmental benefits

Unfortunately, Tesla's figures do not reflect reality.

1. Natural gas power plants, in the real world, consume about 10,000 BTU +/- to produce one kilowatt-hour, at the output terminals of the generator. Crunch the numbers, even using Tesla's mileage claim of 110 watt-hours per kilometer, and you end up with a gasoline energy mpg equivalent in the 50 +/- range.

2. And suggesting that electric cars will be recharged using today's power plant mix, or entirely solar/wind, is a pipe dream. The fact is that adding significant numbers of electric cars to the grid, regardless of the time of day, will force the addition of new power plants, and those will be coal and natural gas fired, unless a broad consumer willingness suddenly emerges to pay the significantly higher cost to produce electricity from non fossil sources. And even in that case, natural gas additions will still be required to maintain grid reliability.

Despite the hype, electric cars are just not perpetual motion machines.

One Tesla suggestion is, however, true. If electric car owners charged their cars entirely from off-the-grid solar panels installed at their homes, the result would likely be a net energy/emissions benefit to society (depending upon the resource cost to make and dispose of the car batteries and solar panels). The problem, of course, is that virtually no car buyer will go to the expense, difficulty, and inconvenience of building a self-contained charging station that only works when the sun is shining.

[TimMullen]

Originally Posted by AgentTripleX

Ya... but the point of Tesla is to get away from oil dependency. If you're still using gas, you're still dependent.

But if you use only electricity, you are going to be limited to how far you can travel.

That's what makes the concept of the Volt so interesting. A plug-in electric for every day, around town usage. A built-in gas engine to use for long trips when necessary.

Originally Posted by Rich H

suggesting that electric cars will be recharged using today's power plant mix, or entirely solar/wind, is a pipe dream. The fact is that adding significant numbers of electric cars to the grid, regardless of the time of day, will force the addition of new power plants,

Currently, using electricity overnight to charge the plug-in cars will just be using excess, unused capacity - the demand for electricity goes down significantly at night when businesses are shut down. There is plenty of extra for charging cars without building new power plants. Now, adding a few million plug-in electric car to the grid, and things may change down the road...

[AgentTripleX]

Originally Posted by TimMullen

But if you use only electricity, you are going to be limited to how far you can travel.

That's what makes the concept of the Volt so interesting. A plug-in electric for every day, around town usage. A built-in gas engine to use for long trips when necessary.


Currently, using electricity overnight to charge the plug-in cars will just be using excess, unused capacity - the demand for electricity goes down significantly at night when businesses are shut down. There is plenty of extra for charging cars without building new power plants. Now, adding a few million plug-in electric car to the grid, and things may change down the road...

For my needs it's fine. They say EPA is 227, but with the new drivetrain that has gone up to 244. Apparently an engineer was able to get 270 miles on a single charge. It really depends on how you drive because of the regenerative 'engine' braking. The goal is to have a longer range and quicker charge time. All of that will take time, but hopefully others will join in the quest to bring technology up to speed and to our liking.

Think about the first computers, cell phones, plasmas, or most electronics for that matter. The first are usually the bulkiest, slowest, and most expensive. As other companies join the market it brings the cost down and the quality up.

PG&E will give you a time of use meter and it is cheaper to charge at night. I believe about $.02/mile.

[Rich H]

Originally Posted by TimMullen

Currently, using electricity overnight to charge the plug-in cars will just be using excess, unused capacity - the demand for electricity goes down significantly at night when businesses are shut down. There is plenty of extra for charging cars without building new power plants. Now, adding a few million plug-in electric car to the grid, and things may change down the road...

It is true that, at least in most service areas, electric demand is lower at night than during the day.

The words "...excess, unused capacity...", however, have little practical meaning when it comes to utility operations. Every load must be time-scheduled onto the regional grid, and matched to time-scheduled generation supply (often from an unregulated third party) and a transmission path.

Construction lead-time, economics, and regulation force utility, grid, and power plant owners and operators to constantly try to match planned future capacity to forecast loads. But forecasts are never perfect, so installed capacity might temporarily exceed, or fall short of, actual load. And, at any given time, the situation varies considerably across the grids that serve each region of the US.

So, in the short-term, adding car charging might more fully utilize the installed capacity in one or more regions, or it might increase shortages.

But, regardless, adding any significant electric car charging loads to future load forecasts will, in the long-term, force the addition of new power plants, or possibly refurbishments, and grid capacity, that would not have otherwise been built.

Electric cars may offer benefits, but probably not in relation to the electric grid.

[SweetDaddyD]

Well at least the Tesla is a lot less of a tease than a Chevy Volt- which IMO is still in pipe dream stage and less appealing each day.

How 'green' is the electric Chevy Volt? | Green Tech - CNET News

Yesterday there were articles on Chevy hitting up the Government for a handout to support them developing battery technology. Psh. The last time GM developed battery technology they sold the patents off to the oil companies, and stalled electric car production for years, even halting Toyota's electric development and forcing the development of hybrids.

So the Volt is scheduled for release the end of 2010. Styling as already changed for the less cool, and mileage isn't even impressive- and it's not even out yet. Predicted to run on electric for the first 40 miles. On a 100 mile trip they say it should avg 50 mpg. And on 200 mile trip- 35 MPG. whoop dee do. Stick with a golf diesel for road trips. Already the projected price has went up to $40K. And remember the EV1? Yeah, they are talking about a lease program again. It's already turned to crap and more will change if it ever comes out- let alone by the end of 2010. GM has no real interest in bringing a real, competitive product to the market. If they did they wouldn't of #$%^&% the EV1 program. And sold the battery patents to Chevron/Texaco.

[AgentTripleX]

The Colbert Report Full Episode | Wednesday Sep 17 2008 | Comedy Central

- Jump to 13:55 to hear about how CO2 isn’t causing global warming

- Jump to 16:39 to hear Bob Lutz’s philosophy on electric cars

[kestrel74]

Originally Posted by AgentTripleX

For my needs it's fine. They say EPA is 227, but with the new drivetrain that has gone up to 244. .

You need to go DOWN some of those hills in SFO instead of just going UP !!

[rob13572468]

Originally Posted by SweetDaddyD

Well at least the Tesla is a lot less of a tease than a Chevy Volt- which IMO is still in pipe dream stage and less appealing each day.

How 'green' is the electric Chevy Volt? | Green Tech - CNET News

Yesterday there were articles on Chevy hitting up the Government for a handout to support them developing battery technology. Psh. The last time GM developed battery technology they sold the patents off to the oil companies, and stalled electric car production for years, even halting Toyota's electric development and forcing the development of hybrids.

So the Volt is scheduled for release the end of 2010. Styling as already changed for the less cool, and mileage isn't even impressive- and it's not even out yet. Predicted to run on electric for the first 40 miles. On a 100 mile trip they say it should avg 50 mpg. And on 200 mile trip- 35 MPG. whoop dee do. Stick with a golf diesel for road trips. Already the projected price has went up to $40K. And remember the EV1? Yeah, they are talking about a lease program again. It's already turned to crap and more will change if it ever comes out- let alone by the end of 2010. GM has no real interest in bringing a real, competitive product to the market. If they did they wouldn't of #$%^&% the EV1 program. And sold the battery patents to Chevron/Texaco.

This is very true.. I too doubt that the volt will ever see the light of day and GM isnt the company they once were. Thats why its easier for them to air commercials than to actually try to build an electric car.

The fundamental issue that I see with the tesla is that after all is said and done that it does not serve a purpose... The idea behind the electric car was to either allow you to drive without depending on oil or to make driving cost less or to lessen the environmental impact of owning a vehicle. The problem is that the tesla (and in fact most electric cars) tend to fail in all of these aspects:

If we want to drive around without using oil then we need to produce energy from somewhere else but the easiest way to do this today is to use existing IC engine technology and fuel it with something else (e.g. natural gas or propane, or synthetic gasoline produced from biomass). Same goes with cost: electric cars are simply way too expensive to operate practically and certainly not cost competitive with gasoline. RichH correctly points out a number of fallacys regarding grid power incuding the onerous idea that there is large amounts of almost free electricity to be had at nighttime when this is simply not true.

Dont get me wrong.. I like the idea of the tesla.. I like the idea of an electric sports car simply because the idea in itself is cool but its wrong to pass it off as a practial answer to our energy and environmental problems, even as a partial one. The tendency is to say "well at least these guys are trying when everyone else does nothing" but that does not help us. I applaud tesla for trying to do this, I just wish they thought things out better.

[rob13572468]

Originally Posted by Rich H

Unfortunately, Tesla's figures do not reflect reality.

1. Natural gas power plants, in the real world, consume about 10,000 BTU +/- to produce one kilowatt-hour, at the output terminals of the generator. Crunch the numbers, even using Tesla's mileage claim of 110 watt-hours per kilometer, and you end up with a gasoline energy mpg equivalent in the 50 +/- range.

2. And suggesting that electric cars will be recharged using today's power plant mix, or entirely solar/wind, is a pipe dream. The fact is that adding significant numbers of electric cars to the grid, regardless of the time of day, will force the addition of new power plants, and those will be coal and natural gas fired, unless a broad consumer willingness suddenly emerges to pay the significantly higher cost to produce electricity from non fossil sources. And even in that case, natural gas additions will still be required to maintain grid reliability.

Despite the hype, electric cars are just not perpetual motion machines.

One Tesla suggestion is, however, true. If electric car owners charged their cars entirely from off-the-grid solar panels installed at their homes, the result would likely be a net energy/emissions benefit to society (depending upon the resource cost to make and dispose of the car batteries and solar panels). The problem, of course, is that virtually no car buyer will go to the expense, difficulty, and inconvenience of building a self-contained charging station that only works when the sun is shining.

Thanks for pointing this out, rich. The tesla reports are a great example of additive hopeful estimation: you want to make something look really good so what you do is look at all the figure ranges and then take the best possble numbers in each area and put them all together with the most hopeful sets of circumstances to produce a very nice looking end result.

(e.g. If everyone builds their own solar electric charging stations and the sun shines 365 days a year and new cheap natural gas is found then you will actually make money every mile you drive your tesla )

The point is that even though some of the estimates are theoretically possible, they are almost all practically impossible even when looking at them individually.

[nak]

Originally Posted by rob13572468

(e.g. If everyone builds their own solar electric charging stations and the sun shines 365 days a year and new cheap natural gas is found then you will actually make money every mile you drive your tesla )


.

With the Tesla roadster, the cost of the car is out of whack (2.5 times more cdostly than an Elise), but the cost of the fuel is not. Anyone who can afford a Tesla roadster can afford enough solar array to fuel it. What's more, using solar to power a Tesla for twenty years is cheaper right now than paying $4.00 a gallon to fuel a 25 MPG Elise. I used 20 years because that is the waranty period for solar panels. Their actual usable life is far longer.

Using solar to replace cheap grid power is not cost effective, but it has other social benefits like cleaner air and fewer mountains destroyed by coal mining.

Using solar to replace gasoline for mobility purposes is a win today, even without any tax breaks, on a fuel to fuel comparison. You don't need unrealistic assumptions about solar to make this work; the usual 4-5 hours effective peak sun per day numbers are real-world.

You don't have to charge the Tesla using the exact electrons that come off the solar array. Sell the solar power to the grid (at the time of day when power costs the most) and buy it back in the evening after you get home from work (when it is cheaper).

[njboy]

Originally Posted by rob13572468

If we want to drive around without using oil then we need to produce energy from somewhere else but the easiest way to do this today is to use existing IC engine technology and fuel it with something else (e.g. natural gas or propane, or synthetic gasoline produced from biomass). Same goes with cost: electric cars are simply way too expensive to operate practically and certainly not cost competitive with gasoline. RichH correctly points out a number of fallacys regarding grid power incuding the onerous idea that there is large amounts of almost free electricity to be had at nighttime when this is simply not true.

.

I used to think that the future of alternative energy is to use IC engines that run on hydrogen, biomass or natural gas. All of those fuels have the same problems as gas and that is because the IC engine is only about 20% efficient. One of the big arguments in support of electric cars is that electric motors are 85-90% efficient.

As for the stress on the power grid we are starting to see wind farms being developed and if we use more nuclear power we can still reduce CO2 production.

Another big advantage to electric cars is that it is far easier to produce electricity at home through solar and wind than to build a chem lab and make fuel. This will allow many to still move about during massive energy shortages which will eventually come.

[Rich H]

Originally Posted by nak

With the Tesla roadster, the cost of the car is out of whack (2.5 times more cdostly than an Elise), but the cost of the fuel is not. Anyone who can afford a Tesla roadster can afford enough solar array to fuel it. What's more, using solar to power a Tesla for twenty years is cheaper right now than paying $4.00 a gallon to fuel a 25 MPG Elise. I used 20 years because that is the waranty period for solar panels. Their actual usable life is far longer.

Using solar to replace cheap grid power is not cost effective, but it has other social benefits like cleaner air and fewer mountains destroyed by coal mining.

Using solar to replace gasoline for mobility purposes is a win today, even without any tax breaks, on a fuel to fuel comparison. You don't need unrealistic assumptions about solar to make this work; the usual 4-5 hours effective peak sun per day numbers are real-world.

You don't have to charge the Tesla using the exact electrons that come off the solar array. Sell the solar power to the grid (at the time of day when power costs the most) and buy it back in the evening after you get home from work (when it is cheaper).

The power grid does not have the ability to store purchased electricity for resale at a later time. If electric car charging load is added at night, it will force the construction of new fossil, and possibly nuclear, power plants to serve that load, regardless how how many well-to-do electric car owners build solar arrays at home and sell electricity to the grid on sunny days.

And if, as you say, "...Using solar to replace cheap grid power is not cost effective...", then it cannot possibly be cost effective to use solar electricity instead of grid power to "...replace gasoline for mobility purposes...", as you suggest.

[Rich H]

Originally Posted by njboy

I used to think that the future of alternative energy is to use IC engines that run on hydrogen, biomass or natural gas. All of those fuels have the same problems as gas and that is because the IC engine is only about 20% efficient. One of the big arguments in support of electric cars is that electric motors are 85-90% efficient.

As for the stress on the power grid we are starting to see wind farms being developed and if we use more nuclear power we can still reduce CO2 production.

Another big advantage to electric cars is that it is far easier to produce electricity at home through solar and wind than to build a chem lab and make fuel. This will allow many to still move about during massive energy shortages which will eventually come.

The efficiency of all combustion-driven rotating machines - IC engines, turbines, etc. - is in the 30% +/- range. That's why running cars using electricity generated by fossil fuel is an automatic energy loser, even without considering losses in the grid itself.

Adding nuclear, solar, and wind seem superficially attractive alternatives until the practical realities intrude of: a) having to use gas turbines with them to provide required grid reliability, and b) someone having to pay the higher costs of alternative power plants compared to fossil power plants.

The only sure way to lower fossil energy use and CO2 with electric cars, is to charge the batteries using as-available power output from non-fossil generators that are not connected to the grid.

[rob13572468]

Originally Posted by Rich H

The efficiency of all combustion-driven rotating machines - IC engines, turbines, etc. - is in the 30% +/- range. That's why running cars using electricity generated by fossil fuel is an automatic energy loser, even without considering losses in the grid itself.

Adding nuclear, solar, and wind seem superficially attractive alternatives until the practical realities intrude of: a) having to use gas turbines with them to provide required grid reliability, and b) someone having to pay the higher costs of alternative power plants compared to fossil power plants.

The only sure way to lower fossil energy use and CO2 with electric cars, is to charge the batteries using as-available power output from non-fossil generators that are not connected to the grid.

to add to this the big reason to keep using IC has to do with the amount of new vehicles that enter the market. That number is roughly 10% each year which amounts to 10 years before we see a changeover. This means that even if the tesla whitestar is a phenomenal success *and* is affordable enough for people to buy *and* enough of them can be supplied it will still be 10 years until we are on electric.

Then you run into the logistics of used vehicle ownership: all those whitestar vehicles will need a battery pack replacement in 5 years or 100K miles. So what will happen for all those whitstar owners is that they will either trade them in on a new one or turn it in (if leasing is an option). Many people can only afford used vehicles and often buy high mileage IC vehicles knowing that they will run to 200K miles or so with only moderate maintainance. For these people the whitestar is not going to be practical if a 10K battery replacement is in the near future.

The main reason for using alternate fuels in IC engines has to do with th fact that we can use them *now* in all vehicles without any changes to our existing infrastructure.

[rob13572468]

Originally Posted by nak

With the Tesla roadster, the cost of the car is out of whack (2.5 times more cdostly than an Elise), but the cost of the fuel is not. Anyone who can afford a Tesla roadster can afford enough solar array to fuel it. What's more, using solar to power a Tesla for twenty years is cheaper right now than paying $4.00 a gallon to fuel a 25 MPG Elise. I used 20 years because that is the waranty period for solar panels. Their actual usable life is far longer.

This is big part of the problem... the capitalization costs: while people in our demographic might be able to afford enough solar panels to charge a car, most people cannot. The public is going to need commercially provided power for at least the near future. So the real question is why dont we see commercial solar plants on a large scale: because the true cost of solar power generation is still more expensive in comparison to things like coal or we would see much more of these plants being built.

[nak]

Originally Posted by Rich H

The power grid does not have the ability to store purchased electricity for resale at a later time. If electric car charging load is added at night, it will force the construction of new fossil, and possibly nuclear, power plants to serve that load, regardless how how many well-to-do electric car owners build solar arrays at home and sell electricity to the grid on sunny days.

My solar array runs the same time of day that my house A/C runs (also known as "first shift" to manufacturers and "normal business hours" to banks). Solar acts like the battery in a hybrid car - picks up surge/peak demand. It acts somewhat like a battery to the grid in that sense, and helps level the load on the grid by producing most power when more power is needed.

If electric cars use less power charging at night than industry and air conditioners use during the day, they are also load-leveling (by increasing demand when there is more capacity) to the power company. Some of the capacity is already there, or we'd brown out every afternoon.

Originally Posted by Rich H

And if, as you say, "...Using solar to replace cheap grid power is not cost effective...", then it cannot possibly be cost effective to use solar electricity instead of grid power to "...replace gasoline for mobility purposes...", as you suggest.

What you really mean is that it is cheaper to charge an electric car with grid power than with installed solar. That's true and we agree on it. But it is cheaper to fuel an electric car with household solar than it is to run a regular car with $4 gas. So when people say solar is too expensive, the answer is "compared to what?" Compared to grid power, it's more expensive. Compared to $4 gas, it's cheaper. It is possible for the price of one thing to be between the prices of two other things.

[Rich H]

Ignoring cost, solar is an effective peak power resource and should be used where possible, but its not as good as a combustion turbine because it cannot be dispatched on demand.

Your writing reflects the two greatest common misunderstandings about the power grid. The first is the perception that pure generation is the most important grid component. Its not. Its the easy part. Transmission capacity and 24/7/365 system reliability are the hard parts. And combustion turbines are the only type of power plant capable of supplying the triple services of peak energy, generation reliability, and transmission reliabilty (large hydro dams can as well, but building more of them is not an option).

Solar and wind generation, in contrast, require substantial reliability support, at considerable cost.

The second big misunderstanding is the snapshot perception that the existence of capacity sufficient to meet peak demand means that there must be lots of unused capacity during the off peak. There isn't. The utility system is designed and built to serve the expected daily and seasonal load swings as economically as possible, with sufficient reserve margin to prevent mass outages when parts of the system fail unexpectedly. Thus, for example, the plants intended to meet peaks aren't capable of running 24/7 as economically as the baseload plants.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, forecasting errors can result temporarily in local or regional unused capacity. But, in the long term, when permanent new load is added to the grid, regardless of the time of day, it will eventually force new capacity additions.

As for solar being cheaper than $4 gasoline, I suggest that if you analyze apples-to-apples, i.e., all costs in, matching vehicle performances, etc., the perceived solar economic advantage might disappear.

Originally Posted by nak

My solar array runs the same time of day that my house A/C runs (also known as "first shift" to manufacturers and "normal business hours" to banks). Solar acts like the battery in a hybrid car - picks up surge/peak demand. It acts somewhat like a battery to the grid in that sense, and helps level the load on the grid by producing most power when more power is needed.

If electric cars use less power charging at night than industry and air conditioners use during the day, they are also load-leveling (by increasing demand when there is more capacity) to the power company. Some of the capacity is already there, or we'd brown out every afternoon.



What you really mean is that it is cheaper to charge an electric car with grid power than with installed solar. That's true and we agree on it. But it is cheaper to fuel an electric car with household solar than it is to run a regular car with $4 gas. So when people say solar is too expensive, the answer is "compared to what?" Compared to grid power, it's more expensive. Compared to $4 gas, it's cheaper. It is possible for the price of one thing to be between the prices of two other things.

[tonybelding]

Originally Posted by Rich H

The second big misunderstanding is the snapshot perception that the existence of capacity sufficient to meet peak demand means that there must be lots of unused capacity during the off peak. There isn't.

Green Car Congress: DOE Study: Off-Peak Production from US Grid Could Support 184.8 Million Plug-In Hybrids

So. . . Who should I believe? Rich H, or the US Department of Energy?