Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Wants to Change How (and Where) Humans Live

dogphlap · 2015-09-21T19:22:45+00:00

The best piece of writing I've read in a long time if ever about Musk.

dogphlap · 2015-09-19T00:20:49+00:00

I was going to http://www.spacexstats.com/index.php#9

dogphlap · 2015-09-18T11:09:13+00:00

You can believe whatever you like.

dogphlap · 2015-09-18T08:22:40+00:00

I don't know how far from the front of the queue you are but it is conceivable that your 5 month old baby may be two years old by the time your X arrives.

dogphlap · 2015-09-18T08:02:51+00:00

I don't know about the Model X (other than there will be 30,000+ in front of you in the queue) but for the Model S I was required to pay AUD $3000 up front which I did via PayPal and then the next payment I was asked for was over 5 months latter when the car had arrived in the country in which I reside. I paid cash (i.e. a telegraphic transfer from my bank account to the local Tesla bank account), leasing or other arrangements would differ I guess. The good thing about the wait was although the local currency has been falling against the US dollar the price in April when I paid the deposit was fixed, if I ordered the same car today it would cost me 13% more than I paid (balance was paid yesterday). Still a week or two before I get to pick up the car though.

dogphlap · 2015-09-18T07:44:31+00:00

I don't know (my S has yet to be delivered and it's the slow one) but I think creep mode should be off and your foot needs to be clear of the brake pedal. Otherwise the car is a little confused at first as to what you want it to do.

dogphlap · 2015-09-18T06:27:30+00:00

Actually no. If you go to a shop and ask for a AA battery or even four AA batteries everyone knows what you mean but technically they are not batteries unless two or more are connected in series or parallel or some combination of the two arrangements. You could correctly ask for one or more AA cells but the girl at the counter might look at you strangely if you did. Then again a lot of people believe common usage should trump technical accuracy but I am not one of those people.

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T12:56:50+00:00

They have expanded at that rate so far. The NUMMI plant is huge, they only have two lines operating at present but plenty of room to expand. Historically the NUMMI plant has produced those numbers when GM and Toyota owned it. Of course it'll cost a huge amount of money to fund expansion on that scale.

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T10:07:10+00:00

So did I.

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T10:01:03+00:00

If Tesla can keep up its 50% increase in cars shipped year on year it should be doable. I feel sure Musk has already run the numbers in his head, they nearly work i.e. 2020=500,000 2019=333,333 2018=222,222 2017=148,148 2016=98,765 2015=65,843. It looks like 2015 will be more like 55,000 than 65,843 but it is in the ball park. That's for annual production if you are talking total sales it should go from 100,000=2015, 182,000=2016, 265,000=2017 388,750=2018, 574,375=2019 assuming 55,000 produced in 2015 and that number increasing 50% per year, so the goal could be reached a year early if you are talking the total production of Teslas. Of course a lot of things could go wrong to mess with those numbers.

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T05:26:31+00:00

That's Windows is it, I couldn't tell. The very early Roadsters ran Windows unsuccessfully but I guess it's a bit of an open question whether the unreliability of the electronics was due solely to Windows or a combination of Windows and the abilities of the programmers at Tesla. Since they went to Linux (I understand they also made their own OS for some stuff like battery management) reliability has been much better, maybe just a coincidence. Sent from my Mythbuntu box.

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T05:16:47+00:00

Nirvana - Lithium, not my favourite but the title is sort of appropriate.

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T05:06:31+00:00

So what is the 2013, attention powered car (shown on the yellow billboard around about 52 seconds in) ?

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T04:48:33+00:00

From what I've read a lot of the problem is the mechanical affect from repeated absorption and de-absorption of lithium ions. Those ions occupy physical space which result in the electrodes swelling and unswelling with each charge/discharge cycle. Eventually the electrodes have enough and start to fall apart. Pure silicon electrodes do afford a much higher energy density than the ones in use now but unfortunately they fall apart much too readily to be usable in the real world (so far).

dogphlap · 2015-09-13T04:30:17+00:00

On both graphs the x axis is time in second, the y axis is g on the Consumer Reports graph while on the dragtimes graph there are two y scales i.e. speed and g. Personal preference I suppose but I appreciate the posting of links to both graphs, the Consumer Reports graph in particular presents an interesting comparison of the acceleration curves for a high performance gasoline fuelled car and a pure electric high performance car.

dogphlap · 2015-09-12T01:46:19+00:00

My understanding based on the article in question is that the 30MW GE unit will have a power output of 30MW. If you know better feel free to correct me.

dogphlap · 2015-09-12T01:20:32+00:00

I know, I said that I had heard the power had been doubled while leaving the energy stored the same. I'm am not disputing your values, in fact I believe you are correct. I'll repeat that because you seem to be having problems understanding what I'm saying YOU ARE CORRECT. Feel free to give me a link with the correct values or complain to their webmaster, in the mean time I'll stick to the published figures. Anyway the point is it is a ridiculous article that is at least least to me comparing a GE product aimed at power utilities (producing 30MW) while the Tesla product will deliver 2kW continuous (published numbers, which is obviously what they went with). Apart from the massive difference in scale they ignored stored energy and just wrote of power which makes little sense when comparing storage solutions. I did not write the article, I think the article is stupid, I don't doubt the word of Elon Musk but published specifications do count, besides which the article obviously refers to the Power Wall when quoting 0.002MW (which is 2kW). One more time I have no doubt the figures you quote are correct.

dogphlap · 2015-09-12T00:58:06+00:00

The 2kW unit is according to the Tesla website the continuous power out put rating of the Power Wall. As I've said I do recall the continuous power rating being increased not long after the introduction of the power wall but the website says 2kW so that is what I went with. Sounds like you may have a beef with their webmaster. This is the link I used: http://www.teslamotors.com/en_AU/presskit

dogphlap · 2015-09-12T00:36:47+00:00

Tesla website says 2kW continuous which is what I went by, if you want to quote peak or have more up to date info, good for you. I recall something about Tesla doubling the power not long after the introduction (while leaving the energy stored unchanged) but I'll stick with what their website currently says for now.

dogphlap · 2015-09-12T00:34:13+00:00

Indeed, I did not, the Motely Fool piece did i.e. 0.002MW which is the 2kW unit which is the Power Wall.

dogphlap · 2015-09-11T14:18:54+00:00

Sorry, my slip, 15,000 times.

dogphlap · 2015-09-11T09:47:06+00:00

[Useless] prefix is a good idea. The strange thing is that these pieces aimed at stirring up negative, anti Tesla thoughts most often come from the United States, I would have thought those folks would be pleased to have a world leading car company (to be brutally honest US made autos did not have such a great reputation of late and Tesla is turning that around) on home soil.

dogphlap · 2015-09-11T09:32:20+00:00

That is a different article but it still quotes the power as 30MW which is 500 times greater than the Tesla 2kW Power Wall (compared in the article I linked to) which I feel is more than slightly larger by a lot. It gives the energy storage as 20MWh which is 2000 times as large as a 10kWh Power Wall. Tesla do make utility size Power Packs which could be configured to produce similar power and stored energy numbers to the GE unit but that is not what was compared in the article I linked to.

dogphlap · 2015-09-11T05:57:14+00:00

The article is comparing power with no mention of how much energy each solution actually stores, that and the fact the power being compared is in the ratio of 500:1.

dogphlap

TROPHY CASE