Diesel pickups are for chumps

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Originally Posted by Justin

Dude, if you're driving 800 miles+ per day, every day, you are probably in the .005% of all drivers.

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Nowhere did I say it was everyday but plenty of people do roadtrips once or twice or more a year that are in that league. OTOH, you make it sound like the time it takes (45 mins for 80%) for a Tesla Supercharge is inconsequential. My point was simply that it's NOT on a long road trip. Porsche's version of Supercharge is looking to charge the battery to 80% in 15 minutes -- at that point, it will be much more like pulling into a service station with a slight line up and be more realistic for long trips.

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Originally Posted by Justin

The bottom line is that most people simply don't take trips like that very often, maybe every couple of years.

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Most people don't but a significant number of people do. I was simply pointing out the errors in the fanboi boosterism.

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Originally Posted by Justin

And yeah, no one is denying that driving an EV long distance is going to add time to the trip, but the fact is that people claim such trips can't be done at all and that simply isn't the truth. Yes, it adds time to a trip, no, I'm not happy about it, nor is anyone else, but the fact is that EVs (specifically Teslas) can and are taking long-distance road trips, contradicting those who claim it can't be done. Sure, you take a time hit, now, with current battery technology, but that's with what amounts to first generation technology, which is a pretty awesome feat.

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I don't recall anyone saying it COULDN'T be done since Tesla actually laid out enough Supercharger stations to make it possible. All the criticism I've seen for the past 2-3 years is that most people don't want to add 45 minutes every 300 miles.

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Originally Posted by Justin

The auto blogs don't like him. A lot of financial-based outlets (CNBC, Fox Business, Zerohedge, and Seeking Alpha) don't like him. All of the outlets under the Gizmodo banner constantly are excoriating Musk and Tesla on what amounts to at least a weekly basis,
and mainstream outlets like the NYT and WAPO have been throwing bombs at him ever since he dared to criticize the MSM via a tweet two or three months ago.

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MSM outlets have been throwing bombs because of his criticism of them. Their (NYT, WaPo, ABC, CNN, NBC, NPR, Scientific American, et al) articles and coverage have been nothing but praise and boosterism because it fits in with their "Green" agenda. I've seen investment articles that were critical of the enthusiasm for Tesla stock but that was because the company still has net to make actual profit, it gets positive cash flow from tax subsidies and decapitalization write-offs -- NOT being generally negative about the company or the man. Most of the financial articles I've read have been the other way -- asking how high it can go while ignoring the lack of profit problem. Ars Technica has pointed out problems with their auto-navigation but has been generally positive.

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Originally Posted by Justin

You're stating the obvious. Nowhere in any post I've made on the internet have I advocated that people buy vehicles that don't meet their needs. If you drive 800 miles a day, then, yeah, a 1st gen EV shouldn't be your first choice.

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No, but you've been claiming EVs meet a wider population need than they do. OTOH, I've noted that it fits perfectly in places like Hawaii where there is no such thing as a long road trip or for urban commuters but it utterly fails for anyone who does long road trips but doesn't want to add hours to their driving time.

As far as Irving's point, I know people in big cities who don't even bother owning a car -- it's too much hassle finding parking and too much expense per month when they have a subway or metro line that meets most of their daily needs. The same criteria apply -- and the boosterism in this thread is still overdone enthusiam.

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Originally Posted by Justin

At this point, Bollinger is closer to production, but even they will be a boutique manufacturer that probably only builds a couple thousand vehicles a year. (BTW, for the guy with the Bollinger reservation, if you get one, can I have a ride? :-) )

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by Gman

WHEN Tesla shits the bed, the vehicles will no longer have OTA updates, etc.

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I’m no Tesla shill and probably wouldn’t ever buy one, but you’d have to assume a 3rd party “App Store” would open...

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Originally Posted by Irving

I'd love an autonomous vehicle to drive for me so I could work between stops. My trip on Wednesday is a perfect example. 7 hours is an enormous amount of time to not be working. That's an entirely different conversation though.

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Is it? I keep reading about how we are “at least a decade” here from capacity being what it needs, but it wasn’t that long ago the same was said about Mercedes F015. And here we are, failing, but doing autonomous. I’d love this more than an EV myself, if nothing else than to just read for 30 minutes on the way to work. Imagine a road trip where you set your car (7hrs in your case) and hop in and nap. Overnight travel, wake me when we are there. Anyway, I think the demand is going to force technology leaps. I have two friends with Teslas (one 3, one S) and multi-state trips are much, much less dramatic than I assumed. The charge speed is basically “go in, pee, get soda” -time. In other words, what you should be doing anyway to avoid a DVT. :)

But we’ll see where Bollinger actually is when my number is up.

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Originally Posted by foxtrot

45ACP would kill an EV with a single shot at 100 yards, guar-an-teed. 9mm would just bounce off the batteries.

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Come'on man! A 9mm will at least crack the plastic on the battery case and cause an acid leak requiring the EPA to confiscate the car owners property. :)

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Originally Posted by foxtrot

45ACP would kill an EV with a single shot at 100 yards, guar-an-teed. 9mm would just bounce off the batteries.

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Foxtrot wins the thread!

WRT range, the problem with the range of EV's is not the range itself, it's the amount of TIME to recharge. That's the killer.

I have a motorcycle that has an effective fuel tank range of 150 miles, less than most EVs.

But I have ZERO "range anxiety" because (a) I plan my rides so I know when I'll be able to refuel and (b) refueling takes at most 10 minutes. There's no EV out there that can recharge in 10 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Martinjmpr

But I have ZERO "range anxiety" because (a) I plan my rides so I know when I'll be able to refuel and (b) refueling takes at most 10 minutes. There's no EV out there that can recharge in 10 minutes.

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I'm wondering how I can fill my 26 gallon tank in less than 5 minutes (pay at the pump). I must be using a network of Superfiller stations I didn't know about.

Does this make any EV fans nervous? : Musk says Saudi fund wants to take Tesla private, justifying his 'funding secure' tweet; stock slips 1%

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Elon Musk is clearing up questions around taking Tesla private, saying his claim last week that the necessary funding had been secured was based on repeated and ongoing conversations with the Saudis.

"Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private," Musk said in a blog post published Monday. "Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5 percent of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. ... I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed."

Tesla has been battling wild stock swings and widespread scrutiny in the week following Musk's tweet last Tuesday. The SEC reportedly intensified previous inquiries into Tesla based on the tweet, which may have violated a rule that prohibits publicly traded companies from announcing plans to buy or sell securities if executives don't intend to follow through, don't have the means to complete the deal or are flat out trying to manipulate the stock price.

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The House of Saud's wealth is based on oil production.

Yeah, that's interesting.

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Originally Posted by Gman

Does this make any EV fans nervous? : Musk says Saudi fund wants to take Tesla private, justifying his 'funding secure' tweet; stock slips 1%

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Yeah, the fact that Elon is considering taking Saudi money has me concerned for a lot of reasons (although I'd hope he'd be smart enough to write the contract such that they have no input into the running of Tesla).

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The House of Saud's wealth is based on oil production.

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Most of the oil-producing ME countries have been rapidly diversifying their investments for a decade or more. Reasons have been as varied as Peak Oil being imminent to an inability of the traditional economies to keep up with population growth (especially in the "young man with nothing to do demographic).