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I've owned a Prius for 12 years, and a Tesla for almost 7. I am very familiar with both. Tesla's system is superior. The throttle pedal is for controlling your speed. The brake pedal is for when you need to stop. It is very easy to coast by controlling the throttle pedal. For years when...

100% solar power just does not make sense. Even if solar cells were free, the batteries would be a bottleneck. For an average day in Seattle you would need about 18 hours worth of stored energy to make it through the day. But the average day is not the problem - the several week stretches of...

Clearly the crossover version of the Model 3 is next. After that Tesla should make ( not in order ): 1. a pickup truck 2. a more affordable electric car with 200 mile range. ( In the $15000 ballpark ) 3. a commercial van for small businesses/deliveries 4. a new Model S/X with the technology...

Why do you think that? I think he views the Model S as the first true Tesla, and he would prefer to forget the Roadster.

I think you should always push the message that the car is made in America with American technology by American workers and is fueled by American electricity. That should defuse the situation.

Taking each point in turn: First: slow 0-60. It is probably difficult to make an EV that is very slow. If you try to save money by putting in the weakest possible motor - the weak motor reduces your regen, which reduces your range, but then you have to add batteries back in to meet your range...

Need to know the ages/heights of the kids to know how long the rear seats will be useful and if that matches how long you plan to keep the car. Even though we only have 2 kids we added the rear seats to our S because it is convenient for playdates. Fitting 3 kids in the back seat ( with one...

Most of these just don't work because Tesla will lose money. High markup on options is how Tesla makes money, I want them to make more money, not less. They need to succeed, not scrape by. The initial install prices you listed for the subzero weather package, dual motors, towing package, and...

I think the mobile generator supercharger solution is misguided. Anyone with access to all the supercharging data and all the sales data ( Tesla ) could have predicted this exact event at this exact location many months ago. The margin for error would likely have been only a few cars. Why go...

I would rather pay a fee to supercharge every time than ever wait in a line like that.

There are many reasons that I have reduced my use of animal products, a primary one is resource utilization. I believe that it takes more resources to produce meat than grains. Many countries import animal feed from less developed nations, and are effectively taking food out of peoples mouths...

Because then you could use that energy to destroy entire planets.

When I was a kid, dinner consisted of some carefully chosen meat that was artfully seasoned and lovingly prepared and some afterthought stuff that was boiled in a pot. Now I eat a lot of roots and shoots, and when they are carefully chosen, artfully seasoned and lovingly prepared - they are...

I find it amazing that Tesla didn't apply the lessons of the Model S performance option to this exercise. The lesson is that people will pay a lot for acceleration. They are spending $30K on the P+L option for the Model S! If the new battery offered any significant performance increase it would...

I like to tell people that it cost 20 million dollars per gigabyte to upgrade the ram in our first computer. ( We had an Apple 2 and a 16K card was 300 dollars ) I frequently slip and say megabyte when I mean gigabyte ( or terabyte ) and the youngsters look at me funny.

I want the Supercharger to be available for my use when I need it. Not ICEd, not blocked, not being used by someone who doesn't need it. I'd also like more of them on secondary routes I like to travel, and with better restaurants and amenities nearby. If paying per use helps with that, then I...

They could start building a battery factory at any time and keep it a secret. The building could already exist right now. They could already be acquiring land for a charging network. Again nobody would know until they start permitting. They could catch and pass the entire supercharger network...

If the goal was to offer the 3.0 battery and get very few takers, excluding the 1.5 owners was a good way to do it. I would have expected that more than 1/2 of the sales of 3.0 batteries in the first year or so would be from 1.5 owners ( only 20% of the population ). All of those cars are 6-7...

Only an auto manufacturer that wants to sell you a new car as often as possible would propose 10 years to be end-of-life. The average car in the United States is 11 years old, which means that 22 years is typical end-of-life. If you stretch that chart out for 12 more years, the difference is...

The good news is that you can drive like this for about 3 straight days, 72 consecutive hours. So even if you are caught in a very long traffic jam, you will be fine. Most gas cars will probably run out of gas long before the Tesla runs out of juice.

I was called as well. My battery is within 5% of new, and without any credit for that, I'm not interested in the upgrade for $29K. Until there is new data, I still think it is likely that they want good batteries returned so they can make replacement packs out of them for the 1.5s.

Is it reasonable to ask people to move their cars when charging is done to clear the space for another vehicle? If not, it may not be a waste putting in anything more than 6kW. You may even want to put the 6 EVSEs spread across 12 spaces ( so each EVSE can reach 2 spaces ), and encourage a...

Maybe the plan for replacing batteries for 1.5 Roadsters is to cobble together good packs out of the ones returned by 2.+ Roadsters when they upgrade to the 3.0 battery? Alternatively, what if Tesla does come out with a plan for a 3.0 upgrade for 1.5 Roadsters and it includes an additional $10K...

Can you use 2.0 ESS sheets in a 1.5 ESS battery?

Can a 1.5 Roadster use a 2.0 battery? If so, I am going to propose the theory of my 3 way battery swap again. ( Not saying I am currently interested ). Party A has a "bad" battery. Party B has a good one. B's battery goes to A. A's battery goes to Tesla, B gets a 3.0 battery. Everybody pays...

Can a 1.5 Roadster use a battery from a 2.0 Roadster?

We'll know in 24 days. What if they managed to provide a camera system that makes the mirrors unnecessary and then you can just leave the mirrors folded in all the time.

The fact that they managed to get rid of the side mirrors means that the Cd could be lower than the Model S. Their absence will also reduce the frontal area gain a little bit.

If I get the upgrade, and there is a badge, I will happily sell my badge to anyone who wants it.

Is there no credit for my old battery which is within 5% capacity of new? ( Probably close to 4% ) I am not excited to pay $29K to get a new 3.0 battery when mine is very close to new ( old battery ). I actually posted this a couple years ago when the numbers were guesses, but now they are...

My answer is yes - some time in the next 7 years. When there are more details on the weight, PEM improvements, warranty, and performance implications I will be able to nail down the timing.

Hey! August isn't over yet. You've got several hours before the disappointment of another missed deadline has come and gone.

I analyzed this exact problem in 2011 and wrote about it in a blog that I haven't touched in years. Refining | High Speed Charging The summary: refineries consumed fuel that otherwise could have produced 533 billion kWh ( by consuming it in existing power plants ) to produce 137 billion...

We wouldn't pump oil out of the ground and refine it just to get petroleum coke, road tar, asphalt, or likely even heavy fuel oil. Those things make up about 10-12% of what you get from oil. Coke and heavy fuel oil have a much higher carbon content than gasoline, so when they are burned they...

This is my list of Supercharger dream locations in the NW that would really make the Tesla as versatile as any gas car. They come from most of the roadtrips I can imagine taking in the future. Some of them are a little esoteric - I tried to order them in descending importance, although #6&7...

Thanks for the corrections. You are right, I should have looked at miles served, not vehicles served.

Even the worst case of turning crude oil directly into electricity at the average 2013 combined cycle powerplant in the US can net you 13.9 kWh. ( SAS Output ) Check my math: 5800000btu per barrel / 42 gallons per barrel = 138000 btu. 138000 btu / 9937 = 13.9 kwh If you turn natural gas into...

I think that oversimplified math is wrong. You are better off to turn oil directly into electricity - even with the extra steps, because a big powerplant can be much more efficient than a small ICE. Burning gasoline has nothing to do with efficiency, it has to do with convenience. It is also...

The tanker truck is pretty interesting. 700kg of H2 can fill 140 Mirai's. Gasoline tankers go up to 11,600 gallons, but it looks like most are ~9000 gallons. 9000 gallons will fill 750 Prius or 530 Camrys. So you will need between 4x and 5x more H2 truck visits than gasoline truck visits to the...

Apparently the Mirai uses 30g of Platinum, down from 100g in the previous generation. That is about $1000 worth of platinum.

I think that Toyota bringing an FCV to market now is trying to make lemonade out of lemons. 15 years ago BEVs did not look promising to the establishment, and fuel cells were an unknown with potential. After years of research fuel cells haven't solved their fundamental problems. Meanwhile...

I want to say a big thank you to you! When I tell others about the good people in the Roadster community, you are a shining star.

I would assume that if the car has had that shake for a while, even after the tires are fixed it will be in desperate need of a proper wheel alignment.

I am hoping the pack will be able to sustain higher output deeper into the rev range and give any kind of slight perf boost. I want insane mode or ludicrous speed! But I'd be happy with ridiculous speed or asinine mode.

It doesn't boil down to one word well, but I like to call ICE cars "19th century technology". The steam engine was commercialized in the 18th century, widely used in the 19th and it was gone by the early 20th. The internal combustion engine was invented in the 19th, popularized in the 20th, and...

This is a problem with policing, not a problem with reporting.

There is a really great system for long haul overland transport that is very efficient and can easily be moved to electric power. They are called trains. Trucks can only compete because of the subsidies they receive. Like free roads and cheap gas.

I would think that there is a lot of optimizing you can do by knowing the track. Heat management is super important to the Model S, so you would plan to use more power where it is worthwhile, and ease up where it is not. In an ICE you can apply full power for any short section, even if it only...

I don't understand the aversion to supercharging. 300 miles at 55mph is 5.45 hours. 300 miles at 75mph is 4 hours If you only get 200 miles of range at 75mph, your trip will still be way faster with a supercharger stop.

I am hopeful that Tesla factors in the marketing and PR value of the battery upgrade message, instead of the raw cost. I also hope that my old battery which is within 3 or 4% of new will have some trade in value. If it doesn't, I will definitely be hanging on to it.