I certainly don't know much about the Tesla whatnot other than the battery price = give or take $10,000 = ouch.
Thanks for the update on the latest weight of only 540 kg. In which case my rinky dink little 7SSS [tm] battery will be 70kg. Another 400 kg is a lot weight to hump around the country. It's a lot more $$$ sitting doing nothing too. And a lot more $$$ to replace. And a lot more load to build the car around so my tyres, wheels, motors, suspension, car body, will all be able to be a lot lighter and therefore use less energy to drive up and down, and will cost less to buy. I guess you don't understand economics or technology.
Did you know that in Formula E and formula for designing cars for roads, the designers try to avoid any unnecessary weight? They try to find ways to shave a gram here and an ounce there in an effort to make the car as light as possible without compromising the driving experience, safety, reliability, appearance etc.
Telling them to design a car to hump around an unnecessary 400 kg will make them groan. And then expect drivers to sit around for half an hour getting a part charge, paying for more electricity than Mq's cute little 7SSS [tm] car which will be in and out in 7 seconds.
You have obviously never had a job requiring speed. Eric's Formula E using the 400 kg extra weight design, "OK guys we are going to swoop in for a Pit Stop next time around". The driver swoops in to the pits having gained quarter of a second on the leader who also pulls in for a tyre change and recharge.
20 minutes later, Mq's 7SSS car has finished the race having done another 10 laps. Eric's car stopped once during the race, for only 20 minutes which was a world record for the monster recharge battery, while Mq's cute little car weighing 500 kg less stopped 8 times for total pit stop time of 56 seconds, Eric's monster car took another 19 minutes of pit stop time.
19 minutes is a long time in Formula E. Taking 19 minutes extra is a LOT of time.
Watch a Formula E race and see how long they stop in the pit stop. Hint, it's not 20 minutes to get the job half done.
It's a daft idea to do as you suggest.
Tesla is not four times as energy efficient as a piston-powered BMW. You are ignoring the energy content of the coal required to recharge the Tesla. A power station can run at 50% thermodynamic efficiency and a car at 30% [near enough for government work]. So a car is much less efficient than a power station, but it's not a factor of 4.
I think you are making the mistake of thinking the energy in the Tesla gets there by magic and is free. There's no free lunch and there's no free electricity. You might pay for the recharge in the price the car cost when new with "free" electricity thereafter. But it's not actually free. You need to study economics to understand that that "free" electricity is not really free. It comes from a stonking big coal-fired power station, or nuclear reactor or photovoltaic desert or wind turbine or methane thermal station or tree burner or somewhere.
For now, the BMW with industrial revolution 19th century technology fine tuned and updated for the 21st century wins in cost per mile. Mq's cute little 7SSS [tm] comes next and the Superheavy Supercharged Tesla Whatnot comes last.
In a race or a 500 km parcel delivery challenge, Mq's 7SSS beats Eric's Tesla Two Ton Tessie to get the job done. Mq has perhaps 10 stops of 7 seconds each, and finishes half an hour before Eric who has 1 x 20 minute stop. Your refill costs a more too because the land on which your van will sit for half an hour is not free. With city parking cost of maybe $2 an hour, that's a significant extra cost for a supercharger stop. Renting the same land to park on for a 7SSS costs only 2c a minute or a fifth of a cent per 7SSS battery swap. That's pretty close to free. $2 an hour is not. But worse than the $2 parking charge is the cost of the vehicle and driver having half an hour downtime.
Not everyone can hang around a Supercharger station yakking with their mates for half an hour while their car charges. They need to be on the road moving, not stopped.
Mqurice |
