New Tesla Roadster

jasonward73 wrote:

Speaking for myself, I hope to never deal with the "amazing" customer service experience of a dealer again. Especially since selling you the car appears to...

Speaking for myself, I hope to never deal with the "amazing" customer service experience of a dealer again. Especially since selling you the car appears to just be a tool to get you in front of the finance guy who then pressures you into thousands of extra services. Don't even get me started on the service department.

With Tesla, I went online and within a few clicks bought my car. I paid the exact same price as everyone else and got the car exactly as I wanted with no compromise and nobody pressuring me for tire, paint, interior, drivetrain, warranty, extras..... And when I need service on my car someone pushes a software update and most of the time it's fixed. If not, some dude comes to my house and takes care of it in my driveway. All for free.

And regarding level playing field... In south FL nearly all the "dealers" are owned by one or two different groups. I see this in many large markets as well. So it's true, you are not dealing direct with the manufacturer for your Ford or Chevy but you are still dealing with a monopoly so there is in effect no competition since one or two groups owns all the dealerships. .

That model is outdated. Time to move on. If you think it's a level playing field you're living in fantasy land.

blusmbl wrote:

That's exactly the point. It isn't a level playing field because every other manufacturer can't sell a vehicle direct to you online. Only Tesla can do...

That's exactly the point. It isn't a level playing field because every other manufacturer can't sell a vehicle direct to you online. Only Tesla can do that. If the model is outdated (not arguing that point one way or another) it needs to be deregulated for everyone, which is not what's currently happening.

APLMAN99 wrote:

Any place that Tesla is selling directly to consumers is also a place that "conventional" auto makers could sell direct, except for their existing franchise agreements...

Any place that Tesla is selling directly to consumers is also a place that "conventional" auto makers could sell direct, except for their existing franchise agreements that would probably violate. The playing field is level, except that other makers have painted themselves into a corner with their prior sales models.

jasonward73 wrote:

Aplman nailed it. It’s nothing to do with a level playing field. It’s the big 3 trying to keep the status quo because they’re afraid to...

Aplman nailed it. It’s nothing to do with a level playing field. It’s the big 3 trying to keep the status quo because they’re afraid to change.

It’s a dumb concept anyway. Microsoft can sell to customers. Apple can sell to costumers. Virtually every manufacturer of anything sells direct to customers. Why have special rules for autos???

Ebs wrote:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-29/teslas-semi-truck-would-require-energy-4000-homes-recharge [quote] [b]Tesla's Semi-Truck Would Require Energy Of 4,000 Homes To Recharge[/b] Elon Musk’s reliance on shock-and-awe tactics and unjustifiably lofty performance projections is creating serious...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-29/teslas-semi-truck-would-requir…

Tesla's Semi-Truck Would Require Energy Of 4,000 Homes To Recharge

Elon Musk’s reliance on shock-and-awe tactics and unjustifiably lofty performance projections is creating serious problems for the so-called visionary as a growing number of experts have come forward to explain that many of his claims would defy the laws of physics.

The latest group to call bulls--- is Aurora Energy Research, a European consultancy which estimated that Tesla’s electric haulage truck will require the same energy as up to 4,000 homes to recharge – a stunning claim that would seem to raise serious questions about the projects viability, according to the Financial Times.

According to these scientists, modern battery technology is incapable of supporting anything close to the 30-minute charging time Musk has promised for the new Tesla semi-truck.

The US electric carmaker unveiled a battery-powered truck earlier this month, promising haulage drivers they could add 400 miles of charge in as little as 30 minutes using a new “megacharger” to be made by the company.

John Feddersen, chief executive of Aurora Energy Research, a consultancy set up in 2013 by a group of Oxford university professors, said the power required for the megacharger to fill a battery in that amount of time would be 1,600 kilowatts.

That is the equivalent of providing 3,000-4,000 “average” houses, he told a London conference last week, 10 times as powerful as Tesla’s current network of “superchargers” for its electric cars. Tesla declined to comment on the calculations.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has previously said the megachargers would be solar-powered but the company has not confirmed whether they will also have a grid connection for when it is not sunny.

Many of Tesla’s current superchargers are powered in part by renewable energy. The company is also experimenting with storage batteries to ease demands on the grid.

Tesla has promised to begin delivering its trucks in late 2019. Electric battery capacity has been improving at a rate of roughly 8% per year – and some have posited that Musk’s lofty claims are merely just him trying to anticipate what will be possible as the first batch of trucks are being assembled. However, if Aurora’s assessment is accurate, then the technological advancements needed to enable a 30-minute charging time for a semi-truck are still years, if not decades, off.

Furthermore, Musk has said little about the enhancements to the power grid that would be needed to power fleets of Tesla’s semi-trucks.

“There are smart and dumb ways to incorporate this level of capacity requirement into the system, but either way, fully electrified road transport will need a large amount of new infrastructure,” Feddersen told the Financial Times.

National Grid, which oversees Britain’s electricity system, has suggested that in the most extreme scenario, electric vehicles could create as much as 18 gigawatts of additional demand for power at peak times in the UK by 2050.

This is the equivalent capacity of nearly six nuclear power stations on the scale of the Hinkley Point project under construction in the south-west of England.

Aurora posits that Tesla could try an engineering solution called segmenting – but that approach would come with technological hurdles of its own.

“The fastest chargers today can support up to around 450kW charging, so it’s not clear yet how Tesla will achieve their desired charging speeds,” said Colin McKerracher, head of advanced transport at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a consultancy."

“One option may be to segment the battery somehow and actually charge different segments simultaneously. This adds additional costs and we haven't seen anything like that done at anywhere near this power output."

XXVoid MainXX wrote:

Here's an interesting article and I may have an idea where they came up with the 4,000 number: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/17/tesla-semi-8-charger-holes-800-kwh-battery-tesla-megacharger-1-6-megawatts/ Tesla said the semi would use less...

Here's an interesting article and I may have an idea where they came up with the 4,000 number:

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/17/tesla-semi-8-charger-holes-800-kwh…

Tesla said the semi would use less than 2kwh per mile so they are figuring you would need 800kwh to go 400 miles which would take a charge rate of 1.6 megawatts to pump that 800kwh in 30 minutes. Say an average home uses 24kwh per day that would mean in 30 minutes it would use only 0.5kwh. That would be the equivalent of the rate of power that 3200 homes would use in 30 minutes. It sound like a lot but if you took the amount of energy that could be generated from 400 miles worth of diesel fuel and it might come out very similar. I'm not exactly sure what point they are trying to make regardless. I assume the average home electricity usage must be a little lower than 30kwh to come up with 4000 homes. I know my dad just put in a solar system a couple of weeks ago and he uses over 40kwhs per day in his old farm house.