Warning Tesla is a cult now, i never thought id find such a Gem.

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DonDeeHippy said:
I could comment be it says it all. and aussie too I'm so proud

https://autoexpert.com.au/posts/the-truth-about-the-tesla-semi-battery-powered-electric-truck
I did a search to find the battery size of the Tesla semi and found this.
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Haha! That was funny, but on the serious side, I own trucks (not the old smoke belching kind he describes) but modern ones that have lots of whiz bang emissions equipment hanging all over them. There is some wisdom in what he is saying. I do not believe the 2 kWh per mile either, especially not in our hilly area around Seattle. Tesla has not done a good job demonstrating the semi yet, although the pictures taken today make me think there is going to be some kind of demonstration right before, or right after the earnings report the upcoming week. Seeing the semi bobtail, between the 2 factories, with a diesel semi right behind pulling a matching trailer makes me think Tesla may pull a bit of a con job on us.
 
It's official, then? Okay, where do I get my official Tesla Cult membership card?
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Pushmi-Pullyu
Tesla Cult Member #245
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I heard an item on the news this evening about a cult member, who had evidently believed Musk's spiel about his self-driving cars.

He had removed himself from the driving seat to the passenger seat, had adjusted it to a comfy position and was lying back in a relaxed posture, allowing the car to crawl along a motorway at 40 mph!

Alas, his relaxation came to an untimely end when he was arrested by the cops. He is banned from 'driving' (Interesting! He is not banned from being a passenger snoring gently next to the driving seat!) for 18 months, fined £1,800, and has to do 100 hours of unpaid community work (picking up litter I expect).

Faith is a wonderful thing! At least that's what religious folk claim - it has never convinced me. I expect it has been somewhat shaken by this experience in his case, but perhaps Elon Musk will descend from above accompanied by the heavenly hosts as he is scraping gum off the St Alban's high street and renew his faith with a few well chosen words about the Model 3 production figures!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-43934504
 
Actually, I think Musk could well have an opportunity for something a bit less modest than a massive 40-ton hauling monster.

I buy a fair bit from Amazon (who doesn't these days) and I've noticed that the delivery guys tend to use diesel vans or petrol cars. There are really not very good for relatively short range deliveries to multiple destinations where the journey consists of very short hops with constant stopping and starting. The fuel consumption must be horrific.

An electric battery powered van could well suit this niche very well, and it is evidently a growing market. Similarly, an increasing number of people order their deliveries online, and again there i a requirement for a short-range delivery vehicle which is constantly stopping and starting.

There is nothing particularly new about this. In the UK when milk was almost universally delivered to your door early in the morning, the commonly used vehicle was the milk float. Powered by lead acid cells! They worked just fine for that application.

I am not (despite appearances) opposed to battery-powered vehicles per se. But I do believe in choosing the right horse for a course!
 
Martin Williams said:
Actually, I think Musk could well have an opportunity for something a bit less modest than a massive 40-ton hauling monster.

I buy a fair bit from Amazon (who doesn't these days) and I've noticed that the delivery guys tend to use diesel vans or petrol cars. There are really not very good for relatively short range deliveries to multiple destinations where the journey consists of very short hops with constant stopping and starting. The fuel consumption must be horrific.

An electric battery powered van could well suit this niche very well, and it is evidently a growing market. Similarly, an increasing number of people order their deliveries online, and again there i a requirement for a short-range delivery vehicle which is constantly stopping and starting.

There is nothing particularly new about this. In the UK when milk was almost universally delivered to your door early in the morning, the commonly used vehicle was the milk float. Powered by lead acid cells! They worked just fine for that application.

I am not (despite appearances) opposed to battery-powered vehicles per se. But I do believe in choosing the right horse for a course!
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I guess Tesla could of set their sights lower from the beginning but I don't think its really there style first a sports car then a big luxury car , I guess attack the big guys first then filter down or let the others fill in the spaces.
I think the workhorse guys are doing that with the end mile ups vans
 
I don't think batteries are at all suitable for passenger cars. They simply don't match the requirement well for a number of reasons. For short-range delivery with frequent stopping and starting, they are ideal. Internal combustion engines are NOT well suited to this. The result is that they don't achieve the correct operating temperature, run inefficiently and spew out pollution.

Delivery vans are far less glamorous than luxury sports cars but there are far more of them so that the market is much bigger. Nor do they need the sort of gimmicks that luxury sports cars are festooned with. I am very much opposed to adding complexity for no reason other than to beguile the more gullible customer. The acronym KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) should be prominently displayed on every designer's desk!
 
Martin Williams said:
I buy a fair bit from Amazon (who doesn't these days) and I've noticed that the delivery guys tend to use diesel vans or petrol cars. There are really not very good for relatively short range deliveries to multiple destinations where the journey consists of very short hops with constant stopping and starting. The fuel consumption must be horrific.

An electric battery powered van could well suit this niche very well, and it is evidently a growing market. Similarly, an increasing number of people order their deliveries online, and again there i a requirement for a short-range delivery vehicle which is constantly stopping and starting.

There is nothing particularly new about this. In the UK when milk was almost universally delivered to your door early in the morning, the commonly used vehicle was the milk float. Powered by lead acid cells! They worked just fine for that application.
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I, too, find it strange that Tesla's first entry into commercial vehicles is trying to make a truck to compete with commercial diesel semi tractors, ignoring the "low hanging fruit" of neighborhood delivery step-vans. Martin also has a good point about low-speed BEV milk floats in England, powered by lead-acid batteries, proving the economic viability of that type of vehicle. It seems to me that a postal delivery route needs the same type of vehicle. I wonder if the USPS (U.S. Postal Service) would have switched its delivery "jeeps" over to BEVs by now if it was run as a true commercial enterprise, rather than one closely controlled by the U.S. Congress, overly regulated, crippled in not being allowed to make much profit, and so resistant to change.

But then, postal services in other countries have likewise not yet switched over to using BEV delivery vehicles, so perhaps not.

I fully expected to see most diesel step-vans replaced with BEV step-vans at least a few years before anybody tried to market a highway-capable BEV semi tractor. (There are already several companies making "yard mule" low speed BEV semi tractors, for use in ports and freight yards, but those are not built to reach highway speed.)

Well, nobody ever claimed that Elon Musk took the easy path! I certainly hope that Tesla does succeed with its Semi Truck, but I remain somewhat skeptical that it's going to find more than a relatively small niche market.

I'm also skeptical that Tesla is really going to build its own truck assembly plant for its Semi Truck, as well as its own nationwide (or world-wide) network of semi tractor service shops. (Service shops for large trucks have larger service bays than those for passenger cars, so I don't see Tesla using its existing service shops to handle semi tractors.) I think Tesla would do far better to partner with an existing semi truck manufacturer, and concentrate on making the BEV powertrains while the truck manufacturer makes the truck bodies. Tesla could also use that manufacturer's service shops rather than create its own.

All just my opinion, of course. It seems Elon has other ideas, since he insists the Tesla Semi Truck will be manufactured in-house!
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I think Musk can sell glamorous cars. He is a gifted showman and salesman. I would never dream of buying my snake-oil from anyone else!

Vans, where the customers are more hard-headed and less likely to be swayed by the sort of (to my mind) ludicrous 'launch presentations' with enormous displays, lasers, dramatic music etc. and Musk's every phrase cheered to the rafters by crowds of fanatical followers, are much harder to sell.

Semis have a level of macho glamour which Musk has seized upon, using this glamour once again. The fact that you cannot actually make a practical battery one with today's technology is never of course mentioned.

It should be remembered, too, that in order to keep investors continuing to support a growing level of spend, then the company must be seen to be producing new products at frequent intervals. Actually producing and selling them for a profit is less important. As we have seen, one can explain a $20,000 dollar loss per car by the fact that it is all actually investment in producing the next model!

How long this can go on is hard to say, but eventually, it will stop working and then the whole pack of cards will collapse. Our straight-talking Australian friend, John Cadogan, in the video has it right!
 
Martin Williams said:
Our straight-talking Australian friend, John Cadogan, in the video has it right!
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o_O :p :confused: o_O

I don't know if this is just more of your EV-hater trolling, Martin, or if you're just playing dumb again. If you really can't see that the chewing-the-furniture, foaming-at-the-mouth, fact-free rant that DonDeeHippy linked to is so over the top that it's literally laughable...

Well then, "Mr. Clean Diesel", the joke is on you!
:p :p :p
 
Martin Williams said:
He had removed himself from the driving seat to the passenger seat, had adjusted it to a comfy position and was lying back in a relaxed posture, allowing the car to crawl along a motorway at 40 mph!
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From what I've read, you have to try pretty hard to defeat the safety devices that Tesla has installed to prevent this sort of thing. First of all, the car has to detect a heavy weight in the driver's seat before it will allow AutoSteer to be engaged. Secondly, the driver's seat belt has to be fastened.

Not impossible of course, but you have to be a very determined fool to defeat the foolproofing designed to prevent Tesla AutoSteer from being used when there is nobody in the driver's seat!

"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool." -- Stephen Hawking
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Well, he's little intemperate in his criticism, but essentially he is right.

This semi is a myth! Payload is THE vital parameter to truckers. Lugging 15 tonnes of batteries around for which you will not be paid is sheer lunacy, even if the problems of range and charging can be overcome.

As to Tesla, I think it might go on for a while, but eventually, it is going to collapse.
 
Pushmi-Pullyu said:
From what I've read, you have to try pretty hard to defeat the safety devices that Tesla has installed to prevent this sort of thing. First of all, the car has to detect a heavy weight in the driver's seat before it will allow AutoSteer to be engaged. Secondly, the driver's seat belt has to be fastened.
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I find a bag of groceries on the passenger seat is sufficient for an alarm to sound in my car. I silence it by fastening the seatbelt. I wouldn't consider this 'pretty hard'. Of course the Tesla may have extra precautions to ensure the driver is still present although I doubt this very much. Hopefully it's not a common problem.
 
Martin Williams said:
Lugging 15 tonnes of batteries around...
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If your objective is to expose your ignorance on the subject, then you've succeeded handily, "Mr. Clean Diesel". Heck, even my earlier generic "napkin math" analysis of a hypothetical BEV semi tractor estimated only 10.35 tons of batteries, and Tesla's battery pack turned out to be somewhat smaller than my estimate of 1800 kWh of capacity.

There are of course further weight savings from replacing the large, heavy diesel engine and transmission with a few electric motors and simple reduction gears, plus weight savings from not having to carry fuel, or an exhaust system, or various other ancillary devices a diesel truck needs but a BEV truck doesn't.

It looks like you're trying to do more Tesla bashing, dude. But you do it so very poorly! :rolleyes:
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Martin Williams said:
I find a bag of groceries on the passenger seat is sufficient for an alarm to sound in my car. I silence it by fastening the seatbelt. I wouldn't consider this 'pretty hard'.
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Do you put the bag of groceries into the seat you are sitting in while driving down the highway? No, you don't.

Perhaps you really are that woefully incapable of critical thinking. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, "Mr. Clean Diesel", and assume you're just "playing dumb" again. :rolleyes:
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Pushmi-Pullyu said:
If your objective is to expose your ignorance on the subject, then you've succeeded handily, "Mr. Clean Diesel". Heck, even my earlier generic "napkin math" analysis of a hypothetical BEV semi tractor estimated only 10.35 tons of batteries, and Tesla's battery pack turned out to be somewhat smaller than my estimate of 1800 kWh of capacity.

There are of course further weight savings from replacing the large, heavy diesel engine and transmission with a few electric motors and simple reduction gears, plus weight savings from not having to carry fuel, or an exhaust system, or various other ancillary devices a diesel truck needs but a BEV truck doesn't.

It looks like you're trying to do more Tesla bashing, dude. But you do it so very poorly! :rolleyes:
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I can't imagine what your napkin or any other 'math' might have come up with, but given Musk is claiming the thing will do 60 mph up a 5% grade, you might like to work out the power output needed for that.

However. I will save you a napkin and tell you that it is about 550 kW. This, however, is neglecting friction, air resistance, gear losses, rolling resistance etc so you probably need to take that figure up by 50% which takes you up to around 800 kW. That means you need four 200kW motors and associated reduction gearing which will weigh about a tonne each.

Now Musk claims 500 miles on a charge. If we assume his average demand is one quarter of this - 200 kW - to get his 500 miles he will have to expend this power for 500/60 hours or a bit over 8 hours. 8 hours at 200kW is 1.6 MegaWatt hours. (Rather a lot of 18650 cells needed!) Due to the greater difficulty of cooling large battery, it is most unlikely that he will manage 150 Wh/kg, but if we generously assume he can do it, this implies a battery weighing about 11 tonnes. Total = 15 tons.

Perhaps you would like to exhibit the calculations on your napkin and we can compare the two.
 
There is no shortage of Tesla stock skeptics. It is almost as if half the people think it is going down to bankruptcy and half think it is going up . . . this is just a peek of the invisible hand of the free market setting the stock price. Search in YouTube for "tesla stock price" and you find someone who will confirm your bias.

In the meanwhile, I drove both EV and gas miles to Florence AL, 75 miles away. I put my money where my mouth is endorsing EV with gas backup.

Bob Wilson
 
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