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[BannedFromDU]

Star Member Zorro (7,439 posts)

Tesla's Model 3 Arrives With a Surprise 310-Mile Range
Source: Bloomberg News

Three hundred ten.

That’s the electric range of a $44,000 version of Tesla’s Model 3, unveiled in its final form Friday night. It’s a jaw-dropping new benchmark for cheap range in an electric car, and it’s just one of several surprises Tesla had in store as it handed over the keys to its first 30 customers.

Tesla has taken in more than 500,000 deposits at $1,000 a piece, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk told reporters ahead of the event. That’s created a daunting backlog that could take more than a year to fulfill—even before Musk took the stage in front of thousands of employees, owners, and reservation-holders to lift the curtain on the company’s most monumental achievement yet.

“We finally have a great, affordable, electric car—that’s what this day means,” Musk said. “I’m really confident this will be the best car in this price range, hands down. Judge for yourself.”

DUmpers can't afford shit.

PoindexterOglethorpe (2,552 posts)
1. I don't think of a $44,000 car as affordable.

I clearly inhabit a different world from those who purchase that car.

When they get the re-charging time down to 15 minutes for a complete re-charge, then they'll be practical. Meanwhile, I regularly make trips of 500-800 miles, and a gas fill up is maybe five minutes. Also, does anyone here know what the cost of a re-charge for a Tesla is?

They make sense for someone who basically only ever drives around town (or is the car dedicated to that purpose) and is always home overnight.

So you can't afford it because it takes too long to charge? Whatever.

Star Member n2doc (45,799 posts)
8. Agree. Neither is 34K. Add on tax, license, and other fees too.

I wonder how many they are selling at the base price. I would venture with a huge backlog they won't be selling too many of those.

Oh, well- better than another gas hog SUV. Hopefully with economies of scale the price will keep going down on future models.

Skinflint.

lame54 (18,848 posts)
18. Not even close to affordable

Get the person in your avatar to buy you one, asshole.

[SVPete]

We drove from San Jose to Rawlins, WY in 25 hours, stopping just for meals and gas fill-ups. Try that in a Tesla. It's be lucky to make it to Winnemucca, NV before having to stop for a very long charge. A Leaf would not make it to Tracy, CA, and a Volt would be running on its gas "back-up" engine by Livermore or Tracy. The our next day we drove from Rawlins to NE Kansas. I'm guessing our 2-day marathon trip would take a Tesla 3 or 4 days, and a Nissan Leaf would take    days.

Tesla is an adequate commuter-mobile for people with longish commutes, and a Leaf for shorter commutes. That, plus running errands around town. Electric cars are a chimera, a mirage, for decades to come, and are horrific polluters when it comes to materials needed for production and end-of-life recycling.

[Old n Grumpy]

I Wonder how long the battery lasts and how long it is good for? Also what is the mileage in freezing cold weather and extreme heat with AC running. I'll bet it is not the advertised 310.

Also is there a government subsidy involved in this somewhere?

Can you recharge it for free with green energy from unicorn farts?

[SVPete]

Heat, cold, heater, AC, and hills all mess with mileage.

And yes, you are subsidizing the things, heavily.

[freedumb2003b]

We drove from San Jose to Rawlins, WY in 25 hours, stopping just for meals and gas fill-ups. Try that in a Tesla. It's be lucky to make it to Winnemucca, NV before having to stop for a very long charge. A Leaf would not make it to Tracy, CA, and a Volt would be running on its gas "back-up" engine by Livermore or Tracy. The our next day we drove from Rawlins to NE Kansas. I'm guessing our 2-day marathon trip would take a Tesla 3 or 4 days, and a Nissan Leaf would take    days.

Tesla is an adequate commuter-mobile for people with longish commutes, and a Leaf for shorter commutes. That, plus running errands around town. Electric cars are a chimera, a mirage, for decades to come, and are horrific polluters when it comes to materials needed for production and end-of-life recycling.

San Jose to Rawlins, WY is 1,056 driving miles -- 4 fill ups or 2 stops a day, although you are right it won't make the 415 miles to Winnemucca, NV.  The big question is where are the charging stations?

[DumbAss Tanker]

Also is there a government subsidy involved in this somewhere?

All kinds of 'em.  I don't know if the 44K is before or after any consumer tax credit, but the entire Tesla organization and its facilities was build and lives on state and federal tax subsidies and grants.  It'd have a crazy price tag without that.

The shortcomings of this vehicle are pretty well laid out, even in part by the DUmmies.  Everyone treats electric cars as something free to recharge, while nothing is further from the truth.  Conversion to an all-electric fleet would have a huge impact on the grid power, and thus cost of power, and thus a real per-charge cost.  Right now it's on the scale of a tinkerer running around in an old VW Diesel Rabbit collecting used-up fry oil and running on it for free, and that works for them.  There are a lot of workplaces or even public charging stations in some few locations where an e-car owner can basically charge for free.  In both cases, as soon as the numbers go up significantly, either the price to fuel/charge suddenly starts to matter a lot and the availability of the freebie deal dries up.  The proponents for this kind of stuff pretend there is an infinite supply of used peanut oil or grid power, but fail to realize there is just a marginal area where that will work for a relatively small proportion of vehicles operating in a given area.

And I agree with the DUmmies who scoff at 44K as 'Affordable,' even though considering the ACA I'm not sure they have any grasp of the meaning of the word.  When I need a car I buy a used one and run it to death over many years, 44K is more than I would ever spend for a daily driver, it would have to be something like a historic military combat vehicle or be a high-end ride with the Bill Clinton special edition blowjob accessory package fitted to get me to incinerate that much cash on something that could be destroyed by any random poor driver as soon as I drove it off the lot.

[Delmar]

Response to PoindexterOglethorpe (Reply #1)Sat Jul 29, 2017, 01:52 PM
DoctorRobert (5 posts)
5. Cost of re-charge is free...

Tesla has set up stations strategically throughout the country to make sure the car does not run out of power when being driven. The computer on board always lets you know where the next station is. They plan to double to triple the amount of stations by 2020.

Cost of recharge is free.  Well, how about that?  It's even better than free if you get the optional roof mounted windmill that turns it into a perpetual motion machine that you can use to power your house when you come home at night.

[Old n Grumpy]

The cost of a recharge is free, right, all the utility companies will give away power and stress out their infrastructure so a few people can drive an overpriced toy.

All this "Green" energy stuff is just a big boondogle, The left neds to understand that the onlt thing that is free is air, and they want to tax that .

[BadCat]

Good for the massive Canadian nickel mines though.

[SVPete]

Good for the massive Canadian nickel mines though.

Not to mention Chinese Lithium and rare earth metals mines.

[Old n Grumpy]

Does anyone know what it costs to replace a battery and what the warranty on it is?

[DumbAss Tanker]

Reading some of the follow-up posts, it appears the Tesla charging stations are no longer free, apparently the owner gets a certain number of freebies and then has to pay, currently around $11 for the fast charge (a fifty-percent charge in a half hour).  The fast charge requires a 400 volt line which few homes have, so home charging on a 220 circuit is more of an overnight thing. 

Thing that strikes me is not just the location of charging stations, but their actual availability...like the used fry oil thing with Diesels, yeah, the owner is in paradise as long as he's the only one doing it, but the fun stops when the user numbers go up.  So, you have a number of charging stations which can accommodate a certain number of Teslas.  However, the Tesla drivers, like other drivers, will primarily drive between 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a big slump in the middle, and I think it's reasonable to assume the Tesla drivers will tend to be somewhat geographically concentrated.  So, driving one and pulling into the charging station, it seems there will be a pretty fair chance of having to wait for other Teslas who got there first, just like a gas pump line except that each person in front of you is taking half an hour instead of two or three minutes.

Apparently Kalifornistan has some rather generous benefits for buying an electric car, which is the sort of thing that will add to the concentration of Teslas there (Taxpayer-funded, of course, so the generosity to some is a consequence of plundering others).  I'm not sure how Kali's kW-h cost stacks up against nicer locations, but I have the impression it's relatively high and the grid is not entirely up to the demands on it now.  This should be an interesting exercise in unintended consequences. 

[Old n Grumpy]

Apparently Kalifornistan has some rather generous benefits for buying an electric car, which is the sort of thing that will add to the concentration of Teslas there (Taxpayer-funded, of course, so the generosity to some is a consequence of plundering others).  I'm not sure how Kali's kW-h cost stacks up against nicer locations, but I have the impression it's relatively high and the grid is not entirely up to the demands on it now.  This should be an interesting exercise in unintended consequences.

I believe Ca has been closing coal generating stations and not replacing the capacity. Hence they get power from outside the state and pay a lot for it. And the infrastructure is having a hard time keeping up with home use , so adding car charging is not going to help.

If it costs $11.00 for a half charge, and you can go 150 miles on it it seems it is not much more cost effective if you have a car that can get 30 mpg on $2.50 a gal of gas.
When you factor in the ill effects of battery manufacture and disposal it is not doing any good for the environment.

Another thing is what is the trade in value of a 2 or 3 year old electric car ? if the battery is close to being used up it would  significantly reduce it's value.

[USA4ME]

I wouldn't mind electric cars, but there's got to be several stipulations:

1) The performance capability would need to be the same as if it were gasoline powered.
2) I want regular American sized cars/trucks, not this dinky junk the Europeans drive.
3) Price needs to be the same or less to own and maintain.
4) I don't want to spend anymore time getting the car "up and running" than I would currently at a gas station. I suggest all batteries be universal and they be easily interchangeable. For example, you're wanting a charged battery, you pull in, the battery snaps out, you exchange it for another battery (either 1/4 charge or 1/2 charge or full charge; whatever the options might be), pay, snap it back in, you're on your way. 5 minutes tops, in and out. Basically the station has enough batteries to change out during the day and they recharge the exchanged batteries in anticipation of resale. Easy peasy.

Technology gets to the point where that's how it works, or something even more simple and efficient, come talk to me. Otherwise, keep working on it until you get it to that point, don't ask me to subsidize your entrepreneurial experiment, and we're good.

.

[SVPete]

I believe Ca has been closing coal generating stations and not replacing the capacity. Hence they get power from outside the state and pay a lot for it. And the infrastructure is having a hard time keeping up with home use , so adding car charging is not going to help.
...

Yes and no. Yes, CA has been closing coal-fired plants, but coal went from producing 1% of CA's electricity to producing .2%. IOW, an 80% drop from almost nothing. OTOH, Part 1, CA built quite a few Natural gas facilities over the past 15-20 years. OTOH, Part 2, the "reasoning" in that second article is the "reasoning" of the 1970s and 1980s that stopped construction of power plants and lead to the crises of the 1990s into the 2000s. So history may be repeating itself.

BTW, another big part of CA's electricity mess is that transmission line capacity has not kept pace with electricity usage growth over the past 40-50 years.

[67 Rover]

My 08 Tacoma has >300,000 miles on the odometer and still going strong, I suspect that will be a thing of the past with electric cars.  Basically trade in every 5-7 years and get a new car payment.

[SVPete]

I wouldn't mind electric cars, but there's got to be several stipulations:

1) The performance capability would need to be the same as if it were gasoline powered.
2) I want regular American sized cars/trucks, not this dinky junk the Europeans drive.
3) Price needs to be the same or less to own and maintain.
4) I don't want to spend anymore time getting the car "up and running" than I would currently at a gas station. I suggest all batteries be universal and they be easily interchangeable. For example, you're wanting a charged battery, you pull in, the battery snaps out, you exchange it for another battery (either 1/4 charge or 1/2 charge or full charge; whatever the options might be), pay, snap it back in, you're on your way. 5 minutes tops, in and out. Basically the station has enough batteries to change out during the day and they recharge the exchanged batteries in anticipation of resale. Easy peasy.
...

1) The bigest issue here is range. Electric cars may be "there" in a few years, but with a big asterisk. A gas refill is quick; a battery recharge is not. Complicating that is that hills, use of A/C, heater, hot weather, and cold weather all diminish range.

2) IOW, no Nissan Leaf, no Chevy Volt, no Chevy Bolt, and no i3 or whatever BMW calls their electric car.

3) The battery could make maintenance "interesting". But the big knock here is that electric cars are heavily subsidized - through direct, per car, $$ subsidies, and through various costly tax gimmicks and boondoggles to manufacturers and owners. Take those away and the per car price skyrockets until large companies have to discontinue the models, and outfits like Tesla would go bankrupt.

4) This is what puts electric car economic viability decades away. Batteries charge slowly. Different car mfrs use different technologies and form factors (= far from standardized, still very proprietary). The batteries are very large, very heavy, and the cars are not designed for easy removal-installation. Even if, decades from now, batteries are standardized and car designed for "easy" replacement, the process will easily be more than half an hour, and the real estate necessary to be able to service 6 or 8 cars at once (like a medium-large gas station) would be much larger than a gas station of similar capacity. Realistically, absent stupid government mandates and subsidies, "decades away" should be qualified with "IF EVER".

[BadCat]

When I lived in Phoenix, the summer weather killed batteries as fast as you could replace them.
Always got batteries with lifetime warranties, because you'd be putting a new one in every other summer.

And there are some HOT places out west, besides Phoenix.

Wonder how those drivers are gonna like getting new EXPENSIVE batteries every other year?

[SVPete]

When I lived in Phoenix, the summer weather killed batteries as fast as you could replace them.
Always got batteries with lifetime warranties, because you'd be putting a new one in every other summer.

And there are some HOT places out west, besides Phoenix.

Wonder how those drivers are gonna like getting new EXPENSIVE batteries every other year?

Yeppers! Had a room mate (long, long ago) who worked at Sears for a while. Their "Die Hard" batteries didn't do well in Phoenix. More recently I saw a piece about Valley of the Sun summer weather diminishing the single-charge range of the Nissan Leaf. I suspect Minnesota or Dakota winters would not do wonders for electric car ranges, either. I suspect the Rockies and Sierras would not be "helpful" either, and while gas cars would also be affected, it only takes some 10 minutes to refill the tank compared to hours for a recharge.

[Wineslob]

DUmmies I have some "free" Solar Panels for you.........



Food for thought:

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/if-tesla-is-worth-more-than-gm-why-are-taxpayers-still-subsidizing-it/