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Articles re Tesla—Fact or Fiction?

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Hydrogen is the future, not battery-electric cars: Lexus | CarAdvice



This sounds like BS. Do we have some authoritative source to set the matter straight? Thanks

I am interested to know more about it too. Here is an observation:

This could have been partially true with cells based on older Lithium ion chemistry. With the M3 rollout, Tesla is setting up superchargers within major cities. Atleast some of Tesla owners that are apartment/condo dwellers likely would use these superchargers exclusively. Tesla, obviously for competitive reasons, might be tightlipped on the chemistry or battery pack breakthroughs.
 
If one Supercharge really reduces the cycle life by 20, then 50 supercharge cycles would consume the battery. There is no evidence that this is happening.
Or the battery has 20000 charges and the point is moot. I've supercharged my battery probably more than 50 times and I've seen hardly any change on it. If you supercharge it at much greater speed than 1C than yes you damage the battery. The issue I'm guessing is the Toyota guy is thinking of dumping 135kW into a 8kW Toyota battery which WILL reduce its longevity. Especially if they don't have adequate cooling, which Tesla does but I'm not sure about the Prime f.inst.

Cobos
 
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Didn't Tesloop get 200K miles on the original pack, with a lot of supercharging? Not to mention Prof Dahn's work showing that faster charging speeds, up to a point, might actually be better than slow charging since it reduces the time spent charging and the possibility for negative side reactions. And finally, there are already lithium ion chemistries which can charge in 5-10 minutes, LiTiO and LiFePO4.
 
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Hydrogen is the future, not battery-electric cars: Lexus | CarAdvice



This sounds like BS. Do we have some authoritative source to set the matter straight? Thanks

I think the main reason fast charging can be hard on a battery is heating and Tesla is careful to regulate temperature in the cells while fast charging. The reason they go with a lot of relatively small cells compared to the rest of the industry is for temperature regulation.

There are car services like the one between LA and Las Vegas that does that round trip at least once a day. They have put something like 200K miles on their Model Ss and supercharge every day. Their battery degradation is on par with other high mile Teslas.

With the silicon added to the anodes in the 2nd gen cells, there may be some damage from frequent supercharging. Silicon in the anodes can increase battery capacity quite a bit, but the problem is as silicon absorbed lithium ions, it expands. In a closed space like a battery cell, that can cause damage as the battery is charged and discharged. Tesla has been limiting super charging speeds on cars with the silicon added cells if they have been fast charged over a certain number of times. This may be due to degradation from the anode expanding lithium ions. At slower charging speeds the expansion probably happens slow enough that the anode can expand into space Tesla/Panasonic provided for that purpose.

Whoever wrote that article is assuming that battery tech is not going to advance. There are several solid electrolyte design batteries being tested in labs now that promise to have better energy density than the best li-ion cells, can go through more charging cycles, and may be able to charge safely at a higher rate. It's going to take a while for this tech to make it into cars, but when it does it will not only make li-ion obsolete, but will likely make every other type of car fuel obsolete too. Especially hydrogen.

Conservative estimates are for 1st gen solid state batteries will have 2X the energy density as current Tesla/Panasonic cells. That makes the long range M3 and MS 600 miles cars. 500+ in the worst weather conditions quite easily. Few people are going to drive more than 600 miles in a day. That reduces supercharging on the roads by quite a bit.

Urban superchargers are going to be lower power, which won't push any battery chemistry as hard as the current ones.

If Toyota keeps insisting the future is hydrogen, they will likely be one of the casualties when the car market gets disrupted. The infrastructure for hydrogen the customer sees is similar to gasoline, but in reality it is quite different. Hydrogen, even in a best case scenario is much more wasteful and less economic than electricity. Most hydrogen is made from natural gas, but even if you make it by electrolysis of sea water, the amount of electricity required could drive several EVs for the cost of one tank of hydrogen.

Hydrogen also isn't as maintenance free as Toyota tries to make it. A hydrogen car needs a high pressure fuel tank that needs replacing every few years. Hydrogen is the universe's smallest molecule and it escapes from every container. As it makes its way through the walls of a metal storage tank, it makes the metal brittle. Eventually the tank will rupture. At least yearly the tank needs to be inspected for decay and replaced if it is close to failure.

The tank in the Mirai looks like you need to partially dismantle the car to get the tank out. The tank is also below the back seat. At least in a gasoline car, if the tank ruptures in an accident, you usually have some chance of getting away before the car completely goes up. If the hydrogen tank ruptured in an accident, it's a tank under high pressure with an extremely flammable gas right under the passenger cabin. I would expect the back seat would end up going through the roof of the car, or if they designed it to only blow downwards, the force would probably flip the car over.

Li-ion batteries are flammable too, but it takes even longer for a li-ion fire to get going than gasoline (most of the time), which allows people to get out of the car. The only times people have been trapped in burning EVs has been when the damage was so bad the people in the car were either dead or incapacitated by the crash.

This article has a tiny nugget of truth, but it's 95% FUD.
 
Didn't Tesloop get 200K miles on the original pack, with a lot of supercharging? Not to mention Prof Dahn's work showing that faster charging speeds, up to a point, might actually be better than slow charging since it reduces the time spent charging and the possibility for negative side reactions. And finally, there are already lithium ion chemistries which can charge in 5-10 minutes, LiTiO and LiFePO4.


Tesloop is only supercharging and the real life test showed that it does not hurt the Tesla Batteries.
 
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Forbes published a hit piece by a guy who appears to be a short seller but interestingly enough the disclosure just says he “may have positions in the securities mentioned in this article.”

Really nasty business — surprised that Forbes published trash like this, although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point. Short sellers seem increasingly desperate with the Model 3 coming out.

Tesla Shareholders: Are You Drunk On Elon Musk's Kool-Aid?
 
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Forbes published a hit piece by a guy who appears to be a short seller but interestingly enough the disclosure just says he “may have positions in the securities mentioned in this article.”

Really nasty business — surprised that Forbes published trash like this, although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point. Short sellers seem increasingly desperate with the Model 3 coming out.

Tesla Shareholders: Are You Drunk On Elon Musk's Kool-Aid?
He's short. He admits it in the article.

That was a doozy. Apparently excerpted from some private news letter.

The Adam Jonas upgrade that seemingly neutralized the Model 3 news has really sent the anti-Tesla cult over the edge. For a good time, read the Twitter feeds of all the usual suspects. :)
 
What exactly did the WSJ say about "hammering out" Model 3s? It has sparked not only this kind of outrage but by my count at least 7 or 8 ambulance-chaser press releases seeking "injured" shareholders.

You used to be able to get a free WSJ preview article by googling the exact title, but they shut that down. And not only do I not want to expend the money for a subscription, more important, I don't want to give it to News Corp and the Murdochs.

Maybe someone here could past an excerpt of a key paragraph? Selective quoting is not copyright infringement.
 
Forbes published a hit piece by a guy who appears to be a short seller but interestingly enough the disclosure just says he “may have positions in the securities mentioned in this article.”

Really nasty business — surprised that Forbes published trash like this, although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point. Short sellers seem increasingly desperate with the Model 3 coming out.

Tesla Shareholders: Are You Drunk On Elon Musk's Kool-Aid?

I posted a comment - I couldn't resist.
 
What exactly did the WSJ say about "hammering out" Model 3s? It has sparked not only this kind of outrage but by my count at least 7 or 8 ambulance-chaser press releases seeking "injured" shareholders.

You used to be able to get a free WSJ preview article by googling the exact title, but they shut that down. And not only do I not want to expend the money for a subscription, more important, I don't want to give it to News Corp and the Murdochs.

Maybe someone here could past an excerpt of a key paragraph? Selective quoting is not copyright infringement.

Unknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the car’s production began in early July, the advanced assembly line Tesla has boasted of building still wasn’t fully ready as of a few weeks ago, the people said. Tesla’s factory workers had been piecing together parts of the cars in a special area while the company feverishly worked to finish the machinery designed to produce Model 3’s at a rate of thousands a week, the people said.
[...]

One worker who spent time in the Model 3 shop—dubbed by some as Area 51 because of the limited access and secretive nature—described watching young workers in September struggling to move large pieces of steel to weld together instead of using robots as is traditionally the case.

“In place of the robots...you’ve got two associates lining up with a big, old spot welder hanging from the ceiling by a chain, and you’ve got one associate kind of like balancing it and trying to get the welder in position, and you’ve got another welder with his arm guiding it,” this worker recalled seeing. “Sparks go flying.”

 
Unknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the car’s production began in early July, the advanced assembly line Tesla has boasted of building still wasn’t fully ready as of a few weeks ago, the people said. Tesla’s factory workers had been piecing together parts of the cars in a special area while the company feverishly worked to finish the machinery designed to produce Model 3’s at a rate of thousands a week, the people said.
[...]

One worker who spent time in the Model 3 shop—dubbed by some as Area 51 because of the limited access and secretive nature—described watching young workers in September struggling to move large pieces of steel to weld together instead of using robots as is traditionally the case.

“In place of the robots...you’ve got two associates lining up with a big, old spot welder hanging from the ceiling by a chain, and you’ve got one associate kind of like balancing it and trying to get the welder in position, and you’ve got another welder with his arm guiding it,” this worker recalled seeing. “Sparks go flying.”


Thanks! Doesn't sound great, but that's probably over a month ago at this point. I originally didn't expect they'd ship more than a few of them this year, so even if they don't get to 5000/wk in December it's a win from my perspective.
 
Thanks! Doesn't sound great, but that's probably over a month ago at this point. I originally didn't expect they'd ship more than a few of them this year, so even if they don't get to 5000/wk in December it's a win from my perspective.

I agree. WSJ is consistently anti-Tesla and anti-renewables, so they put the heaviest slant possible on their reporting. Even if true (and I'm ready to believe it was true at the beginning of September), it's in the past and most likely not relevant anymore.
 
I agree. WSJ is consistently anti-Tesla and anti-renewables, so they put the heaviest slant possible on their reporting. Even if true (and I'm ready to believe it was true at the beginning of September), it's in the past and most likely not relevant anymore.
Given the source (hahahaha, what source: i.e. "people familiar with the matter", Daily Kanban...), I'm actually not willing to believe it's true.
 
author is Donn Bailey whom is presently short TSLA via long term options,
Actually, the numbers you chose to copy came from mostly the Nikola website, not Donn Bailey's article. You should be clear about who you are asking for answers and is not responding.

As I read it I think it is $3 billion in truck value, not reservations. That would be about 10,000 or so trucks.
 
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