abe

Okay, with so much pessimism about the government's new standards on mpg....maybe the future will be okay. I am pretty sure in the 70s with the new emmission standards we all thought it was the end of an era....and it was for while with the american muscle cars. Now we worry that it will be the end of an era and our sports cars. Maybe its just a transition....afterall cars today are more powerful yet more fuel efficient and less harmfull to the environment than 30 years ago.
Follow me...many have heard of Tesla. They are doing very very well and Mercedes is now consulting with them about battery technology.
Maybe Porsche will be next....and for those who do not like quiet cars Porsche will offer for an additional 10k a little button that will make engine sounds too.
Take at look at their site....now they are coming out with a Sedan and I don't see them asking uncle sam for any bail outs. I know that in the next 5 years I will be in the market for a family sedan for the mrs and I will consider the Tesla Model S. These are not your EV1 GM cars.
Thoughts welcomed...
abe

brendo

abe - you're back on your meds! i can tell by the optimistic tone in your post :-)

saw a tesla at the track last week at everybody went nuts. one of the top sales guys here in seattle left porsche to manage the dealership here. i'm about to get a posse together to go take it for a drive.

i'm not sold on them, that's for sure, but they are the coolest of the bunch IMO

abe

Heee heee heee...not optimism nor pessimism nor Prozac nor Zoloft. The ABE speaketh the truth!
My little crystal ball(s) were right about the economy, car industry, euro vs dollar and I think this Tesla thing may be the way to go. Now who could screw it all up... taxation, unions, government interference or just as bad one of the old auto comp (Daimler) completely takes over and messes it up.
If I were the US GOV I would have spent the billions on creating cheaper electricity via clean coal, nuclear, solar all of the above so that when we plug our cars they are cheap to run. Low energy costs also means cheaper manufacturing costs for all sectors. Unfortunately, I don't see us going there...they are doing all the reverse with trying to tax coal, oil and making it impossible for nuclear. Solar and wind will never provide all our needs.
If I were the CEO of Tesla I would go overseas to Ireland, NZeland, or Australia and propose to open a full scale factory provided they can give some assistance in the form of low corperate taxes and labor cost. This happend in NIreland 15+ years ago and it helped their unemployment situation. In this economy a smart government should listen to that. I certainly think in the long run its a mistake to stay in CA....and as you can see at first they were going in NCAL, then SCAl now both...I am pretty sure local governments were trying to work with Tesla. They should be careful who they go to sleep with....specially in CA who is ranked 50th when it comes to business friendliness.
abe

axhoaxho

Top Gear reviews the Tesla...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG3bMKR5eXk

ADias

Were you here in the 80s? it took a decade or more to recover from the crappy designs of the government mandated policies... This time it's going to be worse.

Mercedes does not need Tesla's battery tech. Mercedes has been working with Continental on Li-Ion for years. Tesla's solution is a joke. Have you driven a Tesla? It has the driving dynamics of a top-heavy top, due to its massive battery. Besides... pure battery driven cars are not the solution any time soon - no range and too long recharging times. The Tesla's claimed fast 45 min recharging is not realistic, as it severely lowers battery life. Besides who on the open road wants to wait 45 min to top a car, this, if one can find a proper high current charger to do the job?

Gasoline continues to be an excellent fuel and today's car technology emits very clean exhausts - we do not need electric cars. Besides... there's plenty of gas - Arctic holds more oil and gas than thought. And no... CO2 is NOT a pollutant. We are pawns of misguided dishonest politicians.

I'm not against hybrids - and serial hybrids in particular - as those are KERS solutions and KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovering Systems) when implemented correctly with light energy storage do make sense.

Dr_KarlB

Abe,
One of my old engineers now works for Tesla, and he brings the test cars around now and again.
The acceleration of these things is AWESOME... eye popping literally... makes my C2S really feel slow...
Of course they only have one gear and rev to 15k RPM or so... and top out at 120MPH.
But this is a more usable range really... in reality how often do our cars go over 120MPH? Even at the tracks around here the straights arent that long.

I believe they are working with MBZ on POWERTRAIN technology... battery, control electronics etc. not just Li-batteries.

The heavy battery pack has a somewhat flexible form factor, so can be re-located to the car floorpan, giving a much better CofG and weight distribution. As battery technology improves, the weight WILL come down and also the price

I would say the future would be to have a car with the massive torque from standstill you get with the electric motor, combined with some kind of gas engine for range and cruising. Re-define Hybrid to maximise performance.. not the boring Prius that you think of today.
I really dont care too much if my car will do 186-200MPH as i will probably never, ever get above 130-140MPH (so far in 25 years of driving thats true), but the thrill of fast acceleration could be enjoyed all the time.

allegretto

ahh yes, the White Buffalo of electricity, the lightweight long-lasting battery. we've been promised them for... a hundred years or so!

the founder of Paypal has another startup here. not sure where it will go however.

Le Chef

The overall goal - reduce emissions and reduce dependency on fossil fuels is right - but the engineers don't have the ability to think outside the box.

Don't blame the government, blame the engineers for not being good enough to meet the challenge.

Kennedy set the goal of putting a man on the moon: today we would probably fail that objective. Maybe we should ask China to do it for us...

allegretto

surely you're joking here? blame the engineers???

that seems a little simplistic to me;

let's see... costs, demand, assignments

do you think engineers work in vacuums?

ADias

You clearly are not an engineer. Limits/issues of electrical storage, in its various forms, are well known by some of us.

BTW... oil is not a fossil fuel. That is an ancient/wrong concept. Oil is produced, and continues to be produced, deep in the earth's crust at depths of 100 miles - no fossils there.

The government and its special interests are to be blamed for stirring issues they do not understand or knowingly want to manipulate. I agree with you though, the government will never solve anything.

Re China (and India an the developing world) we should help them to rise up to our low polluting standards. Our pollution compared to theirs is negligible.

brendo

chef - it's not the engineers that's the problems, it's the economics. we have many electric vehicles - the nuclear submarine fleet. the economics work there with nuclear energy and electric power. they're expensive for sure and certainly fulfill their mission.

if electric cars really were necessary and economically feasable, europe would be using them rather than diesels.

Le Chef

They're excuses for poor thinking. Any fool can design something on a limitless budget and with no conditions. It's the great engineer who can do it despite tight constraints.

brendo

ok, i'll bite.

what are excuses for poor thinking? the fact that we don't have cost effective electric cars?

nyca

Just because a car is "electric" doesn't mean it solves any problems. Where do you get the electricity from? And please, don't tell me "wind and solar".

There aren't many degrees of freedom left to play with. For a gasoline powered car, DFI and turbocharging are essentially the end of the line. They can squeeze a few more MPG out of transmissions with more gears. The only thing left to go after is weight. A car today that is 4000 pounds, needs to be 3000 pounds. How do you accomplish that? Either you make it smaller, or you reduce its weight by taking away from its safety margin, or you make it out of composites. Composites are the way to go, but they aren't ready yet for the economics of production costs that have to fit inside the typical price of an automobile. Sure, composites work well on a Boeing 777, but that doesn't scale down to a Honda Accord.

So at the end of the day, you'll see weight cuts via reductions in the size of the cars, and more weight cuts coming from their safety margin. These smaller, less safe cars will get by with smaller DFI/turbo engines to meet the mandates.

That's why I keep saying, the best gasoline powered cars ever to be produced, are being made right now and over the next few model years. Years from now, cars being made today will sell for a premium in the pre-owned market.

Le Chef

What are the excuses for not having cost effective electric cars? How many generations does it take? Are you telling me we don't have the brains to crack the problem?