> 1. Supercharging stations cost very little to install
False.
> 2. They are solar powered
False. The ones with solar paneled roofs do produce electricity which is sold to the electric company at an inflated rate of 26-32 cents a kWh, the station then buys normally produced electricity back at normal rates of 8-12 cents a kWh. The electricity produced is nowhere near enough to maintain a four car charging station that is running 85kWh 90 minute long recharges or 40kWh 30 minute long recharges on 4 cars throughout the day, this is a simple matter of physics, area, and solar technology.
> 3. They can dump 150 miles of drive time into your car in an hour
3. They can dump 150 miles of drive time into your car in an hour
Which works out to what, one hour of idling at the station for every two hours of driving, making your trip roughly 50% longer compared to a gasoline car? We need much better batteries and/or better charging technology for this to become attractive.
(For the record, I think Tesla and their Supercharging stations are awesome, just wondering why the author would list this ridiculously long stay at the charging station as a "mind blowing" feature.)
(And yes, battery swapping instead of recharging would also solve the problem.)
Well, the Tesla S is essentially their first consumer electric car. It's like buying the first laptop Apple produced (Powerbook 100) which costs around $6000 in today's dollars.
Oh, so we have been hoodwinked, duped, and bamboozled by the mysterious "political industrial complex" huh? All this time, electric vehicles have been perfectly viable and competitive with internal combustion? It is all just a big conspiracy?
That is a perfectly interesting opinion...but it also happens to be one that will make me disregard any further opinions you might have.
i can pay $20k for a car (actually driving one that i paid $2k, but i will leave that edge case out). then i can use $10k of gas a year. maybe will have $10k year of repairs. and it is certain and proven for ages.
now, tesla. I have to pay $60~80k... not depending on leather or comfort, but how far I have to drive! then there's the fact that there's still not know pricing model for charging stations. it's all fine now that the costs of the cars are paying for it. but what will happen next year if Kia starts to make electrics. do you really think Elon will continue to let everyone uses their power stations? will he make it tesla only (and ultimately failing his model as nobody will be able to charge easily as every company will do the same) or will he start to charge for it?
Then there's the fact that nobody knows if those cars will last the same as my $20k 2nd hand cars. How much will you spend on battery over 10years? may be zero. may be another $60k.
so, option A) $20k upfront, $10~20k an year for gas/repairs.
option B) 60~80k upfront, 0 to $80k an year.
yeah, having $0/year would pay off option B in 4years, but it's not certain. The fact that i never spent one dollar in Vegas will make me stick to option A for now.
So much pessimism here. Although I can't afford a Tesla S, I thank god for those who can. They are the early adopters that make the market for future models that surely will be cheaper, either from Tesla or another company. Tesla is on to an awesome idea and so far it's an exciting execution. If only they could get the price for a supercharge-capable car down to $30k, then I'd be happy to get one.
Battery pack replacements are going to be the cost of ownership of electric cars. With as extensive a pack of batteries as they have, it'll be very expensive. Lithium ions discharged at least every other day only last ~5 years.
I wondered what the present value of people's expected gas expenses are, i.e. if you told a random American you'd give them free gas until the end of their days (given they consume gas at the author's rate), how much would you have to set aside today into a safe asset to cover the future expense? TL;DR about $100 000, without hedging longevity and fuel price volatility risks.
The median U.S. age in 2011 was 37.3 years [1]. Thus, the median year of birth was 1973 and cohort life expectancy 74.7 years for men and 79.5 years for women, or 77 years on average [2]. Let's assume 39.8 (best 29.8; worst 49.8) years.
Let's assume the author's $250/month petrol expense. U.S. city petrol prices have increased at an average (standard deviation; CAGR) of 5.5% (19 percentage points; 3.2%) from 1980 to 2012 [3]. Let's use that (best -13.5%, 0%; 3.2%; worst 24.5%) as our expected gasoline inflation rate.
Linearly extrapolating today's 10y30y [4] to 40y we get a crude discount rate of 3.8% (best 3.2%; worst 4%).
Thus, those cash flows are worth $167 934 today, though this varies from $16 765 for the best case, $56 038 for the best case assuming flat nominal petrol prices, $106 732 for the base case with CAGR, and $218 031 for the worst case assuming 5.5% petrol inflation (using the worst gave a nonsense result for nominal gas prices).
Interesting article but too many holes to hold much weight.
In no particular order..
You only don't pay for the charging electricity when using a supercharging station. If 'free' travel involves spending an hour a day at a service station waiting for the car to charge, then it doesn't seem quite so free! It would be more convenient to charge overnight at home but then you pay for this energy.
A minor point, but name any consumer device made in 1985 still receiving regular updates, software or hardware.
Finally, Selling a vehicle that only needs replacing every 50 years isn't going to be much of a business plan.
Negativity aside, I think its a great idea. I rarely drive more than 60 miles a day and I'd love to have an electric car. I'd even hook it up to some solar panels and I'm sure the economics would be comparable to a fuel car. If only the cars were a shade cheaper.
> Selling a vehicle that only needs replacing every 50 years isn't going to be much of a business plan.
It makes me sad that this is true. Is this really the only place we can go now? We have to produce crappy product in order to artificially create turnover so that income remains steady? It makes me hate capitalism.
That's odd. Last I heard, farm and construction equipment manufacturers were doing a great business selling stuff that stood up to decades of hard work. Of course, they cost multiples of what a cheap family car (itself capable of a decade+ of use with proper maintenance) does, but that's a minor issue.
And there are those annoying over-the-road trucks that easily rack up well over 1,000,000 miles and keep going. But it's a crappy business model, so they should all be out of business tomorrow!
Of course you can build a car that will last 50 years. The problem is that very few people would be willing to pay the price, so no one bothers making them.
FWIW, I have a garden tractor in my garage that's coming up on 30 years old and I expect to get at least another 10 years out of it.
I think I'm missing something. How's that you'll be driving "for free" ? Someone has to pay for the energy the cars will be spending.The cars need maintenance. The car will be the "fastest, sexyest" for how long?
There is no free lunch. And Mr. Musk is not trying to give humanity free drive for life... he's just trying to make money. He is just trying to make his stuff popular so he can sell more of it and make more money. It's just business.
The article claims that the supercharging stations are solar. The whole point of the article is about independence from oil, if you ignore the hyperbolic title.
Jason isn't saying Tesla isn't out to make money, simply that they are out to make money from great cars, rather than the oil industry.
I'm still skeptical that the charging stations will scale up to a national scale, but I admire Musk trying.
As another comment on here points out, the power produced from the solar panels is nowhere near enough to power the charging station. At best, it helps them offset the costs slightly due to the difference between the price they sell the (solar) power to the grid, and the price they pay for power from the grid - there's a 18-20 cent/kWh difference in their favour.
Free transportation for life? Sounds good, but what about maintenance such as battery replacement, tire replacement, windshield, fluids, plus insurance, tolls, parking etc. May not be as expensive as fuel, but there's no such thing as a free-ride
Exactly, and during those 3-4 decades that the car is around, you have to replace the battery pack 3-4 times. I'm all for EV's and the apparently impressive quality of this specific car, but it would be nice to see a more accurate cost benefit analysis.
Your break-even point depends a lot on how much you drive each year. I drive about 3000 miles a year (primarily to get to mass transit) and my car gets about 25 mpg in local driving, using 120 gallons of gas a year. At around $4 per gallon, that's only $480 a year or $4800 per decade. My car is 12 years old, so I'd expect a car bought this year to be more efficient.
Once everyone is driving a Tesla, and filling up for "free", where do the taxes come from to pay for the infrastructure?
In Australia, the high price of fuel comes because the government puts something like a 50+% tax on it. Most people (incorrectly) assume that your car registration pays for infrastructure dev/maint, but car registration just pays for insurance/payouts for car crashes, and running of the registration system.
Most of themoney used to build and maintain roads, highways, etc, comes from the fuel tax. If we transfer to a new form of fuel that is supposedly free as this article suggests, where does the aus government look to get the money to pay for the roads?
Just one minor comment, he used to spend $250 a month on gas, i'm amazed, thats absolutely nothing. Here in the UK it costs me £100GBP to fill my tank with diesel, which lasts about 10 days, granted i drive a fair bit, but £300 a month is $465 USD. So i hear ye, bring the electric cars and their super charging stations over here, i'll deal with the minor inconvenience of waiting an hour for a charge, which i personally think is a temporary problem. In the mean time, i'm planning to see how viable making my own biodiesel is.
[1] Cheapest gas in California is $3.71 a gallon.
[2] Cheapest petrol in UK is £1.32 a litre (rounded)
100 litre fill up in UK is £132 or $204.88
100 litre fill up in Cali is £97.89 or $124.43
[1] http://www.californiagasprices.com/
[2] http://www.petrolprices.com/
Making your own biodiesel is completely viable. Until the tipping point where there are too many people making their own biodiesel, and you find yourself competing with everyone else for access to oil/raw material
The idea of 'free' energy for purchasing a car which will last significantly longer than your current car could have major long-term economic ramifications which could need to be considered in the long-term.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing these things, it's great, it's innovative and disruptive. But cars that last longer and don't need as much repairs (theoretically) means less being built, less being repaired, less jobs all the way down the line from the manufacture of spare parts to the installation and general maintenance.
There are similar implications for moving from the massively complex oil industry to a much simpler and flexible electric one. Particularly if solar is the chosen source, vs. hydro or nuclear where, I think, more people would be needed in the process.
Lastly, a reduction of spending and resulting taxes (which for fuel are currently huge) would also have mass implications for government.
Maybe we don't label any of these things good/bad. They just are, and will need to be dealt with.
I hope people are looking at these opportunities and the implications for the economy.
Lastly, how do people feel about calling Elon Musk the 'heir to Steve Jobs and the second coming of da Vinci'? To me, he is as different from those two as they are to each other. Prolific and brilliant, absolutely, but Steve Jobs isn't the second coming of Rockafeller, so why the comparisons, and do they fit?
You could say the same things about the internet or about software... that ingraining these technologies into every part of our society could have major long-term economic ramifications that deserve consideration. Even today, the number of low to middle-wage jobs that could still be replaced with software-driven solutions will amount to a huge number of jobs that will no longer be necessary. Agree with you that we shouldn't label these things good or bad - they represent progress. But we shouldn't ignore the likely ramifications of massive shifts like this until society feels the pain.
We can redeploy those resources to other ventures, even if there is some short-to-medium term pain.
That said, yes, the OP was overoptimistic in the short term, but I don't see how he's wrong in the long term as the price comes down for the Model S and renewable energy is deployed more extensively.
The nerd in me couldn't resist doing the math, and given a few starting figures for my current situation ($13,500 car loan,60 months, good interest rate, $350/mo on gas) it would take 14 years of driving a Model S to make up for the fact that I'm not paying for gas. This discounts the fact that I don't have the $1000 - $1500 a month for the Tesla car payment.
This electric car business is exciting for sure, but it'll be some time before it benefits my income bracket.
These times are only assuming you stop at a 440V Supercharger, of which there are eight total nationally, and only on three road routes, six stations on two California routes, and two stations on a single route between DC and Boston. The 440V high amperage charge also lessens the life of the battery - Lithium Ion cells don't like high amperage or temperatures. Fortunately battery replacements are only $40,000.
A 240V 24A charger which is much more common, and which is not paid for by Tesla so has its own terms, can recharge 18 miles of range per hour of charge, so 13 hours are needed for a full recharge.
A 240V 40A charger can recharge 31 miles of range per hour of charge, so 8 hours are needed for a full recharge.
Tesla also notably recommended that people drive low speeds on long trips to increase the chances they will see ranges of 240 miles as opposed to the 170 or so that seems to be under more typical driving conditions.
When one is off of the Tesla routes on the west and east coast, and driving a steady 60mph without climate control, one can travel 240 miles per 12 hour period if they have access to the higher capacity 240V/40A charger exactly every 240 miles (20 mph average speed), or 240 miles per 17 hours with the 240V/20A station (14.1 mph average speed). This is assuming there is no cold weather. If there is cold weather or faster driving, that reduces to a 170 mile range per 12 or 17 hour period (10-14mph average).
Tesla plans to address this with a nationwide network of Supercharger stations which will reduce the full recharge time dramatically, at the cost of shorter battery life.
Tesla claims that all energy for the network, which requires the ability to deliver to 4 cars simultaneously in 1 hour about 100kWh total of power per 85kWh capacity charge, will run exclusively on a small 30 kW max rated capacity installation of solar powered panels at each 4 car charge station and that customers will not only "Drive for Free. Forever. On Sunlight.”, but stations will produce a surplus of energy that will be sold at a profit.
What I never get is why doesn't anyone ever propose battery exchanges instead of charging stations. It would make a lot more sense to pull in and exchange your dead battery for a charged one (just like buying propane).
> What I never get is why doesn't anyone ever propose battery exchanges instead of charging stations.
It is being discussed in general, not about the Tesla but in the abstract. The Tesla's battery weighs 990 pounds, so it would be a serious undertaking to swap it or a battery like it.
Tesla offers, for a $12,000 fee at time of purchase, a replacement policy that will replace the battery AFTER 8 years of use, and only after 8 years of use. This brings the price of the 240 mile range model to $91,900, plus tax and licensing. It is not a warranty that replaces the battery if it fails. It offers no coverage before 8 years, and at 8 years one may replace at any time.
The 6800 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells used in the Tesla S battery pack have an expected recharge life of 500 charges, which is just over a year if you commute and recharge daily, and is less if you do high amperage recharging such as by using supercharger stations. Most current users are commuting on occasion with their Tesla and do not recharge daily, but 2-3 times a week, so the battery, by avoiding Superchargers, will likely last 4-5 years before the range is reduced to the point that it becomes a problem. This leaves the driver with a car that has a significantly reduced driving range for years 5 through 8 of ownership while waiting for the replacement policy to kick in. (Also worth noting is that for Li Ion battery technology, battery life is damaged by high operating temperature, Arizona drivers in particular should expect shorter life, Alaskan drivers can expect longer life.)
Tesla does offer a $40,000 at-cost replacement for drivers whose batteries have bricked due to not being recharged properly, left in parking lots, or are more than a few years old. This is consistent with the lowest wholesale costs of these battery cells on the global market, with no markup for their added value of the battery enclosure, cooling, heating, monitoring, and recharging hardware, thus it is a fair deal and good value as Tesla is clearly not taking any profit at this battery price point.
Would be neat if the battery itself was something that was like a module. You could drive up to the driving station and some kind of robotic arm would just hook up - swap out your battery module and replace it with a charged version. In essence companies owning the charging stations would own a pool of batteries that they would charge and swap in and out of drivers cars.
The Tesla battery contains over 6800 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells. It costs $40,000 to replace. This battery has a life expectancy of 500 charge cycles. That means the battery cost per 240 mile charge is $80, and the company would have to charge that to recover just their battery costs. Add another $20 to handle tax, labor and the cost of maintaining the equipment and the recharging, so $100 per swap, assuming this is run as a non-profit endeavor. Do you feel there is a large market for people willing to pay $100 for every 240 miles they travel? Such a network of replacement stations assumes that the market will pay these costs.
a) http://green.autoblog.com/2012/11/30/tesla-adds-replacement-... suggests that the battery replacement costs are much lower ( < 12000 in the worst case for the 85-kWh pack and as low as 8000 for the 40kwh pack). I dont know if this price assumes that you will be turning your old batter in - otherwise I would imagine you would be able to recoup some money for that via selling it to recyclers.
b) Also http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li... suggests that the 500 charge cycle number is only valid if every cycle depletes the charge to 0. Assuming that each cycle discharges to 25% - the number of cycles goes upto 2000 - 2500.
Assuming a price of 10000 (Using a medium capacity battery as well as assuming whole sale prices) and a depth of discharge of 25% per cycle and hence assuming battery life of 2250 cyles - you get the battery cost per charge to be 12000 / 2500 = 4.8 . Assuming a 10% tax rate thats about 5.28 dollars per cycle. This number does not seem bad at all.
Tesla offers, for a $12,000 fee at time of purchase, a replacement policy that will replace the battery AFTER 8 years of use, and only after 8 years of use. This brings the price of the 240 mile range model to $91,900, plus tax and licensing. It is not a warranty that replaces the battery if it fails. It offers no coverage before 8 years, and at 8 years one may replace at any time.
Tesla also has cited a price of $40,000 for battery replacement for drivers whose batteries have failed due to not being recharged properly or other reasons. This price is consistent with the lowest wholesale costs of these battery cells on the global market, with no markup for their added value of the battery enclosure, cooling, heating, monitoring, and recharging hardware, thus it is a fair deal and good value as Tesla is clearly not taking any profit at this battery price point.
Tesla does not sell the 85kWh batteries (the ones needed to have a 170-240 mile range) for $12,000. If you hand them $12,000, they will not hand you a battery pack. If Tesla could sell these batteries at this price, they could sell a tremendous number to Nissan, GM, Boeing and others. They could even charge $20,000 and would still have plenty of buyers as it is far below the lowest wholesale cost of the 6800 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells it contains. Or even better, customers could buy the 6800 new 18650 cells in the pack from Tesla for the $12,000, remove them from the battery pack, and become a wholesale dealer of the cells, able to undercut Panasonic's lowest wholesale price by up to 75%. One could make millions selling new battery cells to laptop battery pack manufacturers that use these cells. It is a sure fire guaranteed profit if, as you say, Tesla is selling battery packs containing 6800 brand new 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells for only $12,000. It is the bargain of a lifetime. No VC would pass on funding such a venture, it is a guaranteed profit.
The claim that Tesla is selling these battery packs for $12,000 is false. Tesla is not selling these batteries for that price. They will sell these batteries for $40,000 though, as Tesla's Vice President J. Joost de Vries has stated that that is the price for those who need a replacement.
Tesla does offer to deliver a replacement battery in no less than eight years from purchase date for $12000 (February 2021 if you buy today), to the original owner, provided this fee was paid for when the car is purchased, and provided Tesla is still in business. This is not the same as selling batteries for $12000.
Agreed. This seems a much better business model. You avoid the cost/liability of owning and replacing the batteries too. On the downside, you're back to paying out money to an energy supplier like we do today for gas.
Yes, that is one of the EV issues. Primarily why, I assume, hybrids and electric cars like the Volt have seen more widespread use because they have a gasoline fallback. The popular counter argument is that the vast majority of daily driving amounts to less than 40 miles.
Fair enough - but you'd need a charging station at your destination to make the OP's argument work, because if you charge your car at home every night like your phone, you're on the hook for the electricity (which probably costs more per mile than gasoline - I don't know, but I know it's cheaper to heat with diesel then electricity, so I assume auto fuel is similar)
Very incorrect. A short back of the napkin calculation:
286mi/85kwh / .12 (dollar per kilowatt hour) = 28 miles per dollar or .03 per mile.
Gasoline on the other hand is:
30 mpg / 3.50 (dollar per gallon) = 8.5 miles per dollar or .11 per mile
Electricity comes out far better. Cars are much less efficient than heaters at capturing the stored energy from it's fuel. With a heater you have the benefit of insulation and none of the losses associated with moving a hunk of metal through air.
In NYC, I pay a total of 41 cents per kilowatt hour (including supply charges, delivery charges, fees and taxes) for my electricity. (Source: my latest electric bill. Total of $56.36 for 137 kWh.)
Using that cost in your calculation would yield 8.2 miles per dollar, or .12 dollars per mile.
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In southern Ontario, I pay 6.5 cents/kWh (off-peak, say the "charge at night" scenario I mentioned as a hypothetical.) and $4.50/gallon for gas. (the exchange rate between Canadian and American dollars is even right now). -- That's 0.15 $/mile for gas and 0.02 $/mile for electric.
... huh, so I'd be saving nearly about $850 $/yr with an electric car, even though I only drive about 6500 mi/yr (though half of that is the cross country trip to visit my folks). That said, my car only cost $5500, so it would take longer than the life of the car to pay off the difference to a Tesla.
What's your gasoline cost like though? Similarly expensive I'd wager? These number have to be compared together to be worth a damn. Though yes the numbers make more sense in areas with lower per KWh costs. Cars barely make sense in NYC to begin with it seems though, who's that much of a masochist.
A gallon of gas costs around $4.00 here right now, not much different from the $3.50 assumption in the original calculation.
Lots of people in NYC have cars. NYC isn't just Manhattan, and much of the area in the outer boroughs is more suburban than urban and not accessible via subway.
Large areas like NYC are also going to be the first to have the super charger networks rolled out to them and also more likely to have charging stations available in car parks. But yes home charging doesn't make sense everywhere yet.
Agree with overall idea expect the call for government involvement. Let the market figure this out. If the math makes sense for most people, then it makes sense. If I could get a 25-35k electric vehicle with free or cheap charging and 150 miles on a charge, I'm in.
I have free transportation for life, it's called a bicycle. But I guess for those who have to drive, this is great. But bicycling is easier than you think, and has many benefits.
False.
> 2. They are solar powered
False. The ones with solar paneled roofs do produce electricity which is sold to the electric company at an inflated rate of 26-32 cents a kWh, the station then buys normally produced electricity back at normal rates of 8-12 cents a kWh. The electricity produced is nowhere near enough to maintain a four car charging station that is running 85kWh 90 minute long recharges or 40kWh 30 minute long recharges on 4 cars throughout the day, this is a simple matter of physics, area, and solar technology.
> 3. They can dump 150 miles of drive time into your car in an hour
True.