Tesla is offering support to customers during Hurricane Florence

Like PC CPU's, mass produced at high capability and downrated to create price ranges.

The already smug Prius owner will get all more "smuggier" as they pass the stalled Tesla owners who thought they had a lock on smugness over the oh so pedestrian Prius drivers in their mass market pseudo green cars that actually use much of their energy from coal and carry relatively short life cycle super toxic batteries and subsidized by innocent electric rate payers who are the unsung victims of the new hubris.

As they used to say "all show but no go"

I'll just keep passing all in my 18 y.o. diesal truck with its near 1500 mile range using its tank and auxiliary fuel supply.

a reply to: howtonhawky

Actually, it makes sense to limit the cars capacity. Its probably to reduce the speed at which dendrites form in the batteries, over time. When you re-charge, and re-charge a battery, over and over, eventually the thing will start to degrade, and that usually means that these build ups of material, called dendrites, begin to form between one side of the battery and the other. The danger here is that if the dendrites on one side, get all the way to the other, there will be a failure and a potential explosion, evidence of which can be seen in mobile phones that have gone wrong due to a battery problem.

So limiting the capacity on the battery, so that it is never over taxed by being charged all the way up, is actually pretty smart, and limiting the speed of discharge is also smart, because it will prolong the life of the components.

In this emergency situation however, those using the cars will want to be able to travel as far as possible, as quickly as possible, meaning that the limiters will need to be taken off, so that they can maximise the distance traveled over time, and get as far away from danger as possible. The removal of those limiters, the access to free charging, these will both help consumers make their escape with more ease.

originally posted by: howtonhawky
They do it remotely.

Then how can people know that they do not reduce even more the batteries' capacity whenever they want?

The limiter on the battery is to keep it from degrading faster. That is what they said in the past and buyers should already know about it.

a reply to: Grimpachi

Doesn't that mean that the people that pay more and get an unlimited battery have a higher risk of getting damage on the battery?

Doesn't make sense to me, unless it's a different type of battery.

a reply to: ArMaP

doesn't matter what kind of battery someone has. Overcharging or running it extremely low will lower battery life.

a reply to: ArMaP

That is exactly what it means.

The cars with the non-limited battery packs, will have dendritic battery decay problems faster than those cars that have the limiters on them. The idea, I believe, is that when you purchase the higher spec of car, you take that information and decide whether you want that car or not, with that in mind. Now, if you look at things like F1 engines and other high performance vehicle engines, you will note that these tend to be, although absolutely fantastic engines, discarded after just a few races, depending on the specific type of car and sport involved.

When compared with a high spec petrol engine, the battery system on the highest end probably works out to need about the same amount of shop time, but to fix the battery system rather than engines or components thereof.

Its a trade off. I think its like anything else. If you want something that pushes the envelope, its going to wear harder on components than something which is designed for reliability and cost effectiveness. Its the same reason that there is more wear and tear to deal with on an F35 after a few liftoffs, than there is on a Cesna light aircraft after ten or twenty. One flies faster than sound, pulls stupid turns, and flies combat missions. The other flies at glacial pace, rarely gets asked to pull ANY Gs during a turn, and rarely gets tasked with anything more taxing or dangerous than delivering people or packages.

originally posted by: Grimpachi
a reply to: ArMaP

doesn't matter what kind of battery someone has. Overcharging or running it extremely low will lower battery life.

Are you sure about that? I get that over charging is bad but i think the running low part may not be the same with the new lithium batteries.

Either way it is still super lame to adjust the battery pack based on the consumers pocket book.

Several of the gas cars i have had had issues with the gas gauge and when you had a quarter tank of fuel then turn the car off then turn it back on it shows to be out of gas. It drove me nuts while delivering stuff to various locations and putting the last 10$ of gas in the tank to make it through the day then next time you get in says it's empty.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Yea... I am not buying it at all. What yall argue is beside the point.

Sorry but as long as the battery pack out last the warranty then tesla does not give a crap about any of it other than draining your pocket book like a battery.

Each one of those batteries cost about 10 cents.

18650 batteries stacked

not really that expensive and they run the cooling tubes through them and that extends the life much.

They sell the build it yourself kits on ebay now for less than half the price.

motortesla.com...

Panasonic currently produces array beef for Tesla in Japan as able-bodied as at Tesla’s alleged Gigafactory in the U.S. accompaniment of Nevada. Tesla uses the beef to accomplish array packs.

a reply to: howtonhawky

Well, your saying that does not make it accurate.

Tesla DO care about the product and its lifespan, because the entire idea of the electric car is to reduce waste and emissions. If they do not monitor the life of the battery of the car, they cannot ensure that the product actually serves its purpose, and that is something that Mr Musk would be keen on making sure of. He does not do the things he does just for monies sake, you know? He does have a lot of money these days, don't get me wrong, but its not the reason he has done the things he has done.

He does what he does because he believes the future requires it, or rather that if there is to BE a future on this planet, these things must be done.

What yall argue is beside the point

Its literally the engineering rationale behind the decision to limit the lower spec'd cars, so that they wind up requiring less frequent replacement of their battery packs, which saves materials and money, as well as produces less waste per car.

It cannot be, therefore, beside the point. It is literally the centre of the point.

a reply to: TrueBrit

because the entire idea of the electric car is to reduce waste and emissions.

Are you sure?

Then why limit battery range? Funny how the amount of money in your pocket can allow you to produce more green house gasses if the goal was simply to limit such then they would not offer that service. They would simply set the battery parameters at optimal range and leave it.

I am thinking the ultimate goal is too make money.

Why not build an affordable car?

That is not an average drink your avatar is downing...it's koolaid

a reply to: howtonhawky

You limit battery range, to limit the amount of waste involved in replacing the batteries. Think about this carefully for a second... scratch that, a minute or two. Give it time to percolate.

Lets say that running a Tesla car with no limits, means replacing the battery bank or a decent portion of it, every ten thousand miles or so. Its not that often, but this is just an example. So, you get all the range that is technically possible with the system you have, but it burns out every 10k miles. But, if you limit the battery bank to only a certain number of hundred miles before needing a charge, and can extend the life of those batteries so that they only need replaced every fifteen thousand miles (again, for example), then you make a big difference to the number of battery cells being discarded every year, and if you tally that up to include all the cars running that system, and all the extra battery lifetime that you added by reducing the number of miles per charge, then you wind up with a MASSIVE reduction in waste, compared to running the cars at full capacity.

Furthermore, the entire idea of these vehicles, is to use the Tesla power banks in your home and charge them there, those banks having been charged by nothing but sunlight, meaning that no grid power was used at any stage, therefore meaning that fewer fossil fuels were launched into the atmosphere at a powerstation.

The whole ethos of these machines, is to eventually have a self sustaining system of solar energy capture, running electric cars, which have been optimised to reduce the speed at which their battery packs burn out and need replacing, for the purpose of keeping as much waste as possible out of the air and out of landfill. And there is even better news on the horizon, because battery technology is coming on a pace. Solid state batteries which do not have the drawbacks of lithium ion batteries, and offer benefits beyond their capabilities, are very close to being marketed more broadly, with patents pending on batteries that do not have the dendrite problem, AND will survive any kind of puncture, perforation, or other damage that could possibly be inflicted from an external source.

That means its a matter of time before a battery which does not get damaged by recharging, has a longer charge time and greater capacity, will be coming on stream soon, and when those solid state batteries hit the electric car market, particularly the Tesla, that will be a marriage which results in the cars using that new battery type, being THE most efficient manner of getting from one place to another, that it is possible for one human being to possess.

a reply to: TrueBrit

You make good points and i enjoy the info..

No matter how someone spins this it will not sit right with people and is a poor market plan.

Matching vehicles and components and the only difference is the size of the consumers pocket book.

It is like that ole saying first impressions are everything.

originally posted by: Phoenix
The already smug Prius owner will get all more "smuggier" as they pass the stalled Tesla owners who thought they had a lock on smugness over the oh so pedestrian Prius drivers in their mass market pseudo green cars that actually use much of their energy from coal and carry relatively short life cycle super toxic batteries and subsidized by innocent electric rate payers who are the unsung victims of the new hubris.

As they used to say "all show but no go"

I'll just keep passing all in my 18 y.o. diesal truck with its near 1500 mile range using its tank and auxiliary fuel supply.

At $4 per gallon!

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
This is one of the basic problems with electric cars. In a situation like this where there will be widespread power outages, people who own electric cars are likely to find themselves stranded.

And I've commented on the battery "unlock" before. I think it's a disgustingly unethical thing for Tesla to do to artificially sandbag their cars' battery life unless the customer pays tens of thousands of dollars more to unlock it.

Yes which is why I have a Tesla AND a Prius!

originally posted by: Rewey

originally posted by: Kharron
One of the benefits of an electric car is in areas of high stop-and-go traffic, such as rush hour in big cities. If an electric car sits still and doesn't move (radios and a/c off), it uses no power. If a gas car does that, it constantly burns fuel. Sure, you can turn your gas car on and off all the time as you move and also drain the battery in the process.

An electric car, even in rush hours traffic every day, will give you pretty much 200 miles if it says 200 miles. On a gas car, it all depends on how long you spend idling.

I'm not sure this is correct. Stop-start traffic is still more draining on an electric car due to the additional load the motor is under when accelerating. And when they're stationary, they're still using power in dash lights, running lights, multiple on-board computers, the enormous touch-panel dash, etc.

I looked it up before I posted yesterday to make sure I'm not just repeating what I was told.

Like other electric and hybrid-electric vehicles, BEVs minimize wasted energy by turning the car off when stopped (“idle-off”) and by charging the battery when braking (“regenerative braking”). Electric motors are also inherently more energy-efficient than gasoline or diesel engines.

Not only do they power off when stopped, using breaks uses the force (kinetic?) to recharge the battery. So yes, lights and stuff still drain the battery but it's pretty much insignificant since it gets recharged. Some have solar roofs on top of that to recharge as they go, if there is enough sunlight.

Gas powered cars do none of this, if they're on, they use power for everything that is on. And besides, gas powered cars also have those same lights and computers and so on, those aren't free to run, it all comes from gas.

A full charge on a BEV will give you pretty much what it says... if it says 250 miles, it's pretty much 250 miles even in stop and go traffic.

A gas car can get 280 on a full tank, but it could also get 140 in stop and go traffic. Very inconsistent.