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I considered getting a third Powerwall, but it just didn't seem worth it to me. A/C here is a convenience and a comfort but not a life-or-death necessity. However, now that my old A/C died and I didn't want to be entirely without it, I'm having a true soft-start A/C system installed. This is...

I definitely shall. I'll follow the example of somebody in another similar thread (which I didn't see until after starting this one) and replace my 12-v every 3 years from now on. I actually got off pretty lucky: Although I missed my Pilates class, too late to get a refund for the cancelation...

Just noticed this thread. Very similar to my experience yesterday, except that after the car died the app told me I needed a new 12-v battery. The Ranger is scheduled to come on Monday and install it. It's been suggested that I could install one myself, but the person suggesting this doesn't...

Nope. They have a "Tesla Ranger" (maybe more than one?) on Maui. And presumably they have the most commonly-needed parts, though they could ship a battery over if they had to. When I bought my Roadster (2011 maybe?) service required having a Ranger come all the way to Spokane from Seattle...

Now my faith in Tesla is restored! Someone from the Honolulu service center just called. She got the note from the call center person in Utah, and she rescheduled my appointment for Monday afternoon, which is what I was trying to do when the app bollixed everything up. Thank you Tesla!

Follow-up: Somebody in a call center in Salt Lake City finally answered my call and basically told me they cannot restore my appointment but they'll forward my "concern" to the service center in Honolulu (which is the one I called!) and said they'd get back to me on Monday. I'll post the outcome.

Okay, now I'm officially angry: I tried to change my appointment from morning to afternoon in the app and without asking for confirmation!!! it moved my appointment to next Friday, five days later!!! I could not find any way to contact them in the app so I phoned the Honolulu service center and...

Thanks. They gave me an appointment for Monday, so I'll let them do it. $85 for the battery and $33 IIRC for the labor. Since I don't have a working car, it's easier to wait until Monday than try to get a ride to an auto parts store. The nearest Tesla service center is 97 miles away, on Oahu...

Thanks, guys, I was thinking 2016 but you're right, it's 2018. I really don't think much about cars except that electric is good because no gas. And with solar, it "fills" for free. Is there any difference in batteries as long as it's a Group Size 51R? Are some better than others? Does Tesla...

Today I got in my car, which unlocked with the card key since I was not taking my phone with me (I often do this) but the screen remained blank and when I set my card key on the reader and stepped on the brake pedal, the pedal would not go down and nothing happened. The door would not open the...

That would be a legitimate use of blockchain (if it works, which I'll take your word for.) Has no bearing on the Ponzi scheme which is cryptocurrency.

When I quit eating meat in 1967 I thought about eating fake meat. I eventually decided that if I ate fake meat I'd never lose the craving for meat and I'd always know that I was eating an imitation, rather than the real thing. So I switched to plant-based proteins. (And I continued to eat...

Crypto has no use that generally benefits society. It's great for the inventors and early investors of a crypto that happens to get popular and take off. These people can get rich, but they are not creating anything. It's the best thing since sliced bread for black marketeers, who need an easy...

I have not talked to my broker lately. I wonder what she'd say now. Today's close 664. Sure wish I'd sold at 1,200, or even 1,000. Assuming I live that long. At least if I were to sell now (not intending to!) I'd pay a lot less capital gains tax than if I'd sold it when I should have.

In other words, you could build an electric airplane with the same load weight as a given jet airplane, but the electric plane would be significantly heavier, and probably physically larger, and being heavier, would consume more energy.

When that happens, synthetic fuels will still be more economical then heavy batteries. There's just no getting around the fact that a plane has to climb up out of the gravity well, and heavy batteries cost a LOT of energy to lift.

You cannot compare commercial aviation to personal cars. Commercial aviation, like all other business, is driven by economics: Its purpose is to make money. If Island-Hopper Airways buys an electric plane to fly around Puget Sound, it does not reduce the demand for long-haul jetliners. It would...

I believe "phantom braking" means slowing down when there's no apparent reason for it, or when the thing that triggered it should not have, such as a shadow or an overpass. If there's a good reason, it's not "phantom."

Batteries are constantly improving. A large-capacity short-life battery today bodes well for a large-capacity long-life battery in the future. That said, I don't believe batteries will ever come close to hydrocarbon fuels for Wh/kg, and therefore will never be economical for large commercial...

I don't think Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine was to stop Ukraine from joining NATO. Putin is a Hitleresque madman who wants to annex Russia's neighbors to increase his own power. Allowing countries to join NATO (assuming NATO respects its own commitments to protect its members) is the only...

Thanks.

The poll only allows us to pick one option. I would pick several: Yes, we should do more to help Ukraine. Yes, let's do more to help the refugees. Yes, we should support letting Ukraine join NATO immediately. Not in the poll: We should impose an immediate and total embargo on all trade with...

Eggs, baskets. I'd be scared to put all of mine in just one.

I considered getting a velomobile: a tricycle with a fairing to protect the rider from the elements. But then I bought my old Zap Xebra (long gone now) and with my electricity back then coming from hydro, I was no longer concerned with saving gas. I'd get exercise, which is good, but I was...

I would agree with you about independent financial advisors. Not so much with respect to the people working for Big Evil Banks & Brokerages. Both the research department and the customer-facing brokers have more resources and have met higher standards to get their jobs. And as noted, I don't...

I suspect all those points you listed are why my broker likes TSLA. FWIW, if I'd put the cost of my Roadster (2010 model year, purchased from inventory in 2011) into TSLA, I'd be so stinking filthy rich now it's nuts. But I would not have had the Roadster as my daily driver for six years. And...

Overall, I expect Tesla, the company, to succeed in the long run. Strong company with great products. But TSLA the stock is subject to all the vagaries of the market. I believe the company will continue to succeed, but I have ZERO idea of whether the stock price accurately reflects the realistic...

In 2014 Tesla was a very big risk. A good broker would not have recommended it. Of course, hydrogen was never a good idea and was always just a ploy to keep using fossil fuel. But in the early years Tesla could easily have gone bankrupt. I bought my shares never expecting them to do much, but I...

I was talking to my broker about some investments she was recommending. Nice, safe, dividend-paying funds, like all my investments. I'm not a risk-taker. But I have some TSLA that I bought when I first got my Roadster, when it was around $35 or $40 pre-split, and the subject came up. Sometimes I...

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. I.e., whether or not it can compete economically. Will reduced maintenance and cheaper "fuel" be sufficient to offset the weight disadvantage? I wish them luck. If I had to fly, and if I had a choice, I'd choose electric, even if it cost...

There's a button on the screen that turns on the rear camera. And there's a setting that lets you choose whether the side-rear cameras come on with it automatically. At least this is the case with my Model 3.

Even though methane has carbon? Anyway, my point was that we're not going to see hydrogen as a fuel in airplanes. And even if the landing weight vs. takeoff weight is not a serious issue, the weight of batteries vs. the weight of jet fuel is definitely an issue. I doubt if even short-haul...

Rockets use hydrogen. If there were an advantage to hydrogen in airplanes somebody would already be doing it. It's certainly possible. Presumably it just costs more. I'm going to guess that the reason rockets use it is the difficulty of getting other fuels to burn fast enough to provide the...

^ Totally agree! When I was young, they promised that electricity from nuclear would be "too cheap to meter." You'd pay a fee to have the wires come to your house, and you'd be able to use all the electricity you wanted, for no additional cost. That sure turned out to be bullfeathers. I think...

That's pretty much what I meant. :rolleyes: Advocates claim that next-gen nukes won't produce much waste. They claim (though I disagree) that next-gen nukes could be brought on line faster than sufficient solar and wind can be built. Like I said, they have their own set of problems.

That guy would probably be using ultra-caps if they existed. For all the reasons mentioned above, they don't exist. At least not commercial ones safe enough for use in cars or planes. We are either going to built out renewable energy, or we are going to turn the Earth into Venus Mk II by...

Circa 2007, plus or minus, EEStor was promising commercially-available ultracapacitors in six months. They had just announced that they had succeeded in purifying the material they intended to use as the dielectric. I called BS, on the grounds that they hadn't yet demonstrated a prototype...

Thanks.

Update: I wrote to them and they replied that they know there's a problem and they're working on fixing it.

Any way to get that for iOS?

I own some solar bonds. They are ten-year 5% bonds. They pay interest twice a year and to get my interest I have to log into the web site and initiate a transfer to my bank. For the past several days I've been trying to log in without success. The website used to be solarbonds dot solarcity dot...

Thanks for that. The thing is that I don't have any need to program anything. My Powerwalls are charged by my solar panels, and the Powerwalls run the house at night when there's no sun. I want them to charge all the way up during the day, and I have no reason to set any reserve. And I'm not...

Don't really know how new the app is. It's new to me. Some time ago, I don't recall exactly, the Tesla app on my tablet, that I use for checking my Powerwall's SoC and stats, quit working. It demanded that I log in and would not let me log in. It finally occurred to me that maybe the app needed...

All cars, not just EVs, need a secondary "horn." The loud horn that says "HEY! WATCH OUT! YOU'RE ABOUT TO HIT ME!!!" And a quieter, more polite sound, that says "Hello, I'm right behind you. Could you give me some space, please?" OTOH, a lot of people are just oblivious. When I was driving my...

Batteries would still have to reach half the energy density of jet fuel in order to compete. They are orders of magnitude away from that now. Using green, renewable energy to produce synthetic liquid fuels makes far more sense than putting heavy batteries in an airplane.

P.S. Multi-copters might be easier to fly than helicopters, and that could open the door to hobbyists, but would not change the economics, and could actually make them more dangerous, as pilots undergo very rigorous training which includes safety. Hobbyists, if they're permitted to operate...

I don't think it will be taxed any more than any other commercial activity. Again, the analogy is helicopters. They are expensive, not because of taxes, but because they cost a lot to build and maintain. And there are (for very good reasons!) regulations around operation and maintenance. Very...

I bought my car in 2018. I was not affected by the lie because I didn't believe it and didn't buy FSD. I was responding to a claim that Musk didn't lie by pointing out that he lied to me and many thousands of other buyers. It's true that Tesla has been upgrading hardware. But in other threads we...

I agree that "ride sharing" sounds like it should mean car-pooling or sharing a taxi, but Uber and Lyft use the term "ride sharing" to mean a type of taxi service where private car owners operate unlicensed taxis and are treated as customers of the platform rather than as employees. Thus "ride...

Elon is WAY too smart to believe that those timelines were possible, given the then-present state of the software, and WAY too smart to believe that anybody could know, at that stage, what hardware would really be needed.