Electric cars head toward another dead end

"I do wonder about the Tesla tho. That car seems to have broken thru some mileage barriers, but it's tough to separate hype from price from reality. "

"But as I discovered on a recent test drive of the company?s high- performance Model S sedan, theory can be trumped by reality, especially when Northeast temperatures plunge."

"At the Washington Auto Show last month, Dr. Chu, who has since announced his plan to leave office in the next few weeks, discussed the Energy Department?s goal of making electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids as cheap and convenient as comparable gasoline-powered cars.

He continued: ?We can?t say this everywhere in America yet, but driving by a gasoline station and smiling is something everyone should experience.?

I drove a state-of-the-art electric vehicle past a lot of gas stations. I wasn?t smiling.

Instead, I spent nearly an hour at the Milford service plaza as the Tesla sucked electrons from the hitching post. When I continued my drive, the display read 185 miles, well beyond the distance I intended to cover before returning to the station the next morning for a recharge and returning to Manhattan.

I drove, slowly, to Stonington, Conn., for dinner and spent the night in Groton, a total distance of 79 miles. When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range ? the electrical equivalent of someone having siphoned off more than two-thirds of the fuel that was in the tank when I parked.

I called Tesla in California, and the official I woke up said I needed to ?condition? the battery pack to restore the lost energy. That meant sitting in the car for half an hour with the heat on a low setting. (There is now a mobile application for warming the battery remotely; it was not available at the time of my test drive.)

After completing the battery conditioning process, the estimated range reading was 19 miles; no way would I make it back to Milford.

The Tesla people found an E.V. charging facility that Norwich Public Utilities had recently installed. Norwich, an old mill town on the Thames River, was only 11 miles away, though in the opposite direction from Milford.

After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk, plugged in and walked to the only warm place nearby, Butch?s Luncheonette and Breakfast Club, an establishment (smoking allowed) where only members can buy a cup of coffee or a plate of eggs. But the owners let me wait there while the Model S drank its juice. Tesla?s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford.

Looking back, I should have bought a membership to Butch?s and spent a few hours there while the car charged. The displayed range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford, and as I limped along at about 45 miles per hour I saw increasingly dire dashboard warnings to recharge immediately. Mr. Merendino, the product planner, found an E.V. charging station about five miles away.

But the Model S had other ideas. ?Car is shutting down,? the computer informed me. I was able to coast down an exit ramp in Branford, Conn., before the car made good on its threat.

Tesla?s New York service manager, Adam Williams, found a towing service in Milford that sent a skilled and very patient driver, Rick Ibsen, to rescue me with a flatbed truck. Not so quick: the car?s electrically actuated parking brake would not release without battery power, and hooking the car?s 12-volt charging post behind the front grille to the tow truck?s portable charger would not release the brake. So he had to drag it onto the flatbed, a painstaking process that took 45 minutes. Fortunately, the cab of the tow truck was toasty.

At 2:40 p.m., we pulled into the Milford rest stop, five hours after I had left Groton on a trip that should have taken less than an hour. Mr. Ibsen carefully maneuvered the flatbed close to the charging kiosk, and 25 minutes later, with the battery sufficiently charged to release the parking brake and drive off the truck, the car was back on the ground. A Model S owner who had taken delivery the previous day watched with interest." ===============================================================

My reading comprehension is a little low..... So what did the Tesla finally wind up with, as a range?

I'm gathering about 100 miles?? Which is about what the Leaf claims. But indeed, temp. dependent.

Tesla was claiming 240, 300 miles. Downhill with a tailwind?? lol

They have an 85 kW-hr battery. 15 hp (for about 60 mph) is about 10 kW, which should last 8.5 hrs.

I also read that Tesla will not let reviewers actually take the car home, they can only test under supervision -- which apparently changed in this NYTimes article -- and if the range is only 100 mi, now we know why.

The Tesla makes the Volt look like a bargain. I wonder what Tesla's batteries cost, and how long they last. Dat super-fast charging doesn't help batt life, either.

Oh, dat $465 million gummint loan was an eye-opener. Sheeit, I'd be up and running and in bidniss too, if I had a $465 million loan.... lol

Then you aren't qualified to run a business under Obama's New Economic Policy:

One of the reasons I can afford a Volt is that I have a well proven record of making good purchasing decisions. The Volt has a very competitive overall cost of ownership.

It's already right, big time. If by "right" YOU mean cheap, then forget it. The response to the Volt and other such vehicles is relatively lukewarm at best, as your posts demonstrate. Until the public wakes up to their responsibility (as in never), specialty vehicles won't be truly mass market. Which means that they will always cost at least a little more than the detractors are willing to pay. Then again, in my experience the majority of the detractors aren't in the market for ANY new vehicle. Most of those who are will base their decision on the lowest monthly payment for whatever feature they value the most, which tends to be image-based. Therefore, the holy grail would be a 4 door, 6 ton 4WD badass truck (for the safety of the kids mind you) with a hemi and giant wheels and rubber band tires, that gets 100mpg. With a 1000W stereo and eleventy cupholders, and costing $30 a month for 3 years. It wouldn't hurt if it be could an "everyman's" car as well, which apparently would mean a minimum of 12 airbags, 60mph bumpers, 100% foolproof traction and skid control, and automatic parking and driving.

I remember seeing that feature on the cover of Pop Sci about 10 years ago. It sounds great but I think it's safe to assume that if it could be done practically, then it would be on the market by now. If your idea is to hold out for a vehicle that's affordable because it has hub motors, then you might as well go all the way and hold out for a cheap

My linkedin spam peaked a few years ago. It appeared that it was at least partly automated and the supposed inviters weren't really aware what a nuisance they were generating. Many of the invites were coming from people who seemed to have only recently discovered computers and felt they NEEDED to join linkedin. Although I bet most of them would have a tough time explaining WHY.

I'm sure that linkedin has value to some. Membership may be one of those things where one can be conspicuous by absence, despite having little if any actual advantage.

But in bonker's case it's a joke. It appears he's been kicked out of countless forums for being a jackass. A normal person would learn from that and plan a path to success wherein he could get ahead without opening his mouth, and thereby prevent scuttling his chances. Instead his strategy appears to require endless self promotion which only serves to illuminate his crankiness and add to his mind boggling archive of crackpot writings.

Where are they going to get all this free electricity? The 'grid' is coming apart at the seams as it is, due to the greenies and NIMBYS. The power plants are aging, and running near full capacity. Very few new plants or upgrades are making it through the maze of conflicting regulations, and the BS that Obama calls 'Science'. What happens if a car breaks down on thet 'third rail'? It sounds like the formula to kill thousands (or millions) of greenies every year.

Good idea. Do we get to vote on that?

Very well stated.

I suspect Stuart read far too much Heinlein when he wrote about the Roads.

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie

Which nation is this without vandals or terrorists, where everyone keeps their car in perfect condition and always obeys orders? I've driven in German, Austrian and Swiss traffic and it definitely isn't any of them, though they are a lot closer than America.

-Seems to me we should be building a lot more modern nuclear power

-plants and creating a real mass transportation system. We aren't even

-building real high speed rail. We build medium speed rail.

-"The biggest trouble in going to rail is the "last mile" problem of

-getting around when you reach your destination city."

-I agree.

We can't even find the money to maintain our existing bridges properly.

And Venus Equinox with their Martian tubes that took energy directly from the Sun and turned it into electricity. Interesting Science Fiction for when it was written. :)

I do drive with the windows open at 40F.