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I was through Medway today and took a loop around the park & ride and gas station parking lots. No sign of activity. Check back in April when things thaw...

Sydney to SF, 6543 nautical miles, 480 knot cruising speed, 13 1/2 hours. He could do this...

I do wonder, if he were to catch a plane immediately after the signing, if he could make it back to Fremont in time for a celebration with the line workers on a successful Job 1...

At higher voltages, electrolyte breakdown and side-reactions start to become a problem, affecting cycle life. Fortunately, that's Dr. Dahn's specialty.

Handling - WHERE the mass is matters as much as how much there is. Despite likely being heavier, the Model 3 (and electric 3-Series) is likely to have a lower polar moment of inertia than a gas-powered 3-series - which affects the "quickness" of handling. You can only push that gas motor and...

Aero losses dominate the range equation. Same Cd as an S but 15% less frontal area?

As pack voltage drops, the current required to deliver a particular power level increases. Heat created in the battery is proportional to current squared, times the pack resistance. TL;DR: Amps create heat. Low charge, more amps. It still seems bogus to me, since people have reported...

You guys are chasing down one path... An added cost path where the charger is a separate module in the car, with a cost. I'd like to propose a second path, one which Renault uses with the Zoe: There is no charger. That is, the AC charging functionality may be integrated into the motor's...

Around here they get repainted every spring, but by mid-winter they're gone. The sand and salt which is necessary in the winter is very abrasive, and chews away the lines. FSD is just going to have to deal with it. Even a well-painted retroreflective line can be nearly invisible at night in...

There's a saying about how creative destruction will either change the managers' minds, or change the managers. In my own industry, I'm forever allowing my mind to be changed...

Yes. Also superior low-RPM torque. Of course, an electric motor's torque characteristics blow diesel out of the water.

And this. This is why needing windows to auto-lower just to open the door is a dumb fair-weather design. Yes, you can preheat longer, but you don't know you need to do that until it's time to leave. And now you're late.

Honestly, the only place to grow the ICE business today is China (and you will need lots of NEV's to play there), India (and you have about 10 years before that ICE market fizzles out), and by conquest from other brands. We're just a few years away from ICE not even being a zero-sum game...

None of the Subarus did, until they went back to framed windows a few years ago. Never noticed any wind noise from the windows in my Forester.

How long do we think Tesla will be able to resist the additional margin of "premium" options on the 3? What was the motto at the quarterly call a few quarters ago? "Cash is king?" Day 1 the car is going to be simple, but by the time 200,000 of them come off the line... Arguably there's...

Not many used examples around $7k available yet...

Black & Veatch were doing the planning work around here, they're not a small company. JAM: Just Apply Money

My world has potholes, frost heaves, and "mud season", aka spring. I'll take the extra suspension travel and some tire sidewall, thanks. Particularly since AP1 and 2 are currently too dumb to avoid potholes.

Add to that, the LA Basin is riddled with old and active oil wells. Hitting an old well casing will make a mess of Godot. Hitting an ACTIVE well casing would be a whole other level of not good. Doesn't appear to be anything active between Hawthorne and LAX though.

Sounds like what Tesla really needs to do is to adjust their lower voltage cutoff limit to a point at a higher state-of-charge. Seems like the charger is doing a bottom-balance on the pack at very low SOCs. Of course, doing that is going to cause the cars to have a different (smaller) kWh...

The other thing they're working on, and have been very quiet about since 2015, is solid-state batteries. Where are they on those? Nobody who knows is saying. Maybe they think they'll have them by 2020. I do wish people would stop giving air to their interminable EV press releases though...

Nice Buick! I'm just kidding, it looks like they did a really good job on it!

Hyundai is doing this with the Ioniq EV, it has no 12V battery. They use a small section of the traction battery to provide an always-on 12V source with no DC/DC converter required. The 12V section bootstraps the electronics to allow the main HV Contactors to close on car startup.

48V is the "new" low-power automotive standard, but everyone's afraid to go first. Maybe Tesla will. Hyundai uses a small segment of their traction battery for the 12V power source, no lead/acid battery. Getting either 12V or 48V out of a Tesla traction battery while leaving the HV contactors...

THere There's a max length limit for truck+trailer. With a 53' trailer and a sleeper cab, you're at it already.

That's.... Just.... Wow. Thanks for sharing that.

I suspect the Bolt and the i3 are applying a little reverse torque via the drive inverter at low speeds to bring them to a stop. My Volt is permanent magnet, and it seems to keep rolling at 2-3mph forever. But I think it has a "creep mode" permanently turned on.

Don't ever ride a single-cylinder motorcycle. Abruptly closing the throttle in a low gear can actually cause the rear tire to pulse between locked and turning (on dirt, anyway). Really though, regen on the throttle has a perfect analog in driving a manual ICE - progressively let off the...

And the counterpoint, it's 286 miles to the Watertown Service Center from where I am in Maine, so yeah, I hope enough neighbors put in reservations to warrant a SvC somewhere in the state. (Montreal might actually be closer for me...)

Now THAT... THAT is a grand vision infrastructure project. And way more useful than a damned wall.

Acceleration doesn't seem to be lacking. Not Ludicrous, but seems OK.

This is very hard in practice. The trailer has a huge impact on the aerodynamics (and somewhat on the rolling resistance) of the truck/trailer system. The gap between the truck and the trailer is where a lot of the aero drag occurs, along with the rear of the trailer and the underside. Hence...

I hear Oxis is shipping a 400Wh/kg Li-S battery these days, but that cycle life is terrible. Military applications only at this point, is my understanding. Solid-state batteries are probably needed to get the required energy density for commercial flight. Hopefully Dr. Goodenough really has...

Just finally read this thread. Holy hell. There were MULTIPLE places in the factory where people saw that and passed it on. Inspection after stamping. Inspection after welding/bonding. Inspection after painting. The windshield installer. The windshield trim installer. The folks who...

A canbus recording of one of these slow sessions would probably be informative. The charger will be constantly advertising how much current it can supply, and the car will be making requests for the charger to supply particular voltages and currents. It should be possible to determine if the...

Yeah, looking back it seems like this was pretty thoroughly discussed already. So we're back to "something's broken."

Door #3: They're trying to keep supercharger site power demand charges from becoming too outrageous? (Commercial sites pay a fee for not only each kWh delivered, but an additional fee for the maximum power draw in kW each month to cover infrastructure and grid costs. These demand charges can...

And if you count China, there are four high-speed DC standards, they have GB/T.

No, wear of the charging connectors either in the car, or the cable, are far more likely.

Bandwidth across the charger interface is likely insufficient for video. Maybe fine for a few stills, but how useful would that be?

If they find untaxed electricity in your battery, you're in big trouble. They dye the untaxed electrons bright green. ;)

He can use a 24A EVSE with either a 14-30 or a 10-30 plug on it, depending on if his dryer outlet is 3-pin or 4-pin. Like one of these: 24A Level 2 EVSE LCS-30P with NEMA 14-30 | ClipperCreek

I've shared a few thoughts with a senior-ish State Rep I know. He was receptive. Among the ideas I conveyed: 1. The vast majority of a dollar spent on gasoline leaves the state. The majority of a dollar spent on electricity remains in-state. 2. Damage to roads is proportional to 4th to 5th...

So how do we feel about this, and how it's potentially locking-in several years of increased US gasoline demand vs. a more rational vehicle mix.

Meh, I still want to see what a P3DL will do after wk057 gets to tinker with one for a bit.

It's a 2012, and it drives quite nicely. Quiet, responsive (not compared to a Tesla, obv). The 1st gen was the best built car GM has made in decades - they actually cared about it. There are some negatives - the back seat is useless unless you're a child or a dog, for instance, and the...

Well, the icepack is a lot smaller than it used to be... Ideally, we get to a place where neither submarines or aircraft carriers are needed. Yeah, not happening anytime soon. That said, marine autonomous drones exist, they're incredibly low power (low speed as well, naturally), and enough of...

I got into a CPO Volt ~18 months ago. While I don't like going to the gas station, I'm not in a race to get into the 3 and I'd be okay with a CPO Model 3 in a couple years. Not interested in loaning it out on the Tesla Network (and rural Maine isn't going to have that anytime soon anyway), so...

The D's will need more. If you put the High Voltage Junction Block in a location to minimize the rear motor cable run, the front motor cable run gets longer. Aluminum is an interesting choice. Lighter per amp carried than copper. Also considerably less expensive. Connections are trickier...

In terms of oil demand destruction from EV's, I consider Norway to be the canary in the coal mine. Their (preliminary) transport fuel consumption dropped in February. Gasoline/Petrol sales had been declining for years, but Diesel sales had been growing fast enough to continue to increase...