Tesla Roadster 2.0

goz83 wrote: »

What are you talking about? There is so much dribble in that post, it was hard to choose what part of it I should clean up first.

Firstly, it looks great. But then some cars are fugly to the majority of us while being drop dead gorgeous to a small few.

While the noise of some "super cars" can be a thrill, it's not the main attraction. Personally, I would rather drive a quiet, good looking car than a noisy, ugly beast. It's also largely about performance and that's where the d1ck measuring comes in. Noise is way down the list unless you drive a fart can.

French bags ARE better than chinese bags. Most chinese made rubbish falls apart and/or are knock-offs. The exception is when there is a high level of quality control from international companies.

I would be confident that Tesla will make sure it drives pretty well....and they would want to with such power. The weight (and where they put it) will help with the low centre of gravity.

The vast majority of cars on the road are well capable of breaking the speed limits and most can go twice over, or more. So your last point is irrelevant.

Also, people drive cars they shouldn't be in every single day of the week. Twice this week I was nearly side swiped by soccer moms in big people carriers they couldn't drive.

cros13 wrote: »

That is up for discussion. The only way I see the engineering working out for traction etc is with a lot less weight than a model S.
Cell energy density is increasing which means increases in battery capacity without increases in weight or volume.
The majority of the difference in capacity between the battery specs of the roadster from 2008 and the roadster 2020 are accounted for by these changes.
In addition the roadster 2020 is carbon fiber bodied vs the steel/aluminum roadster 2008.

There are a number of other inherent advantages EVs have over combustion that come into play with handling.
This is an i3 next to an ActiveE (electric 1-series):


Tall car right? how do you think it handles?

What if I told you the center of gravity of the i3 is lower than the 3-series (and pretty much at the same height as the GT86's) and it has weight distribution 48.5:51.5?

Batteries in a purpose built EV are mounted low in the chassis, comprise a lot of the weight of the vehicle and can be split and distributed to optimise weight distribution. And the low low CofG means they stick to the road like they're on rails.

The next big thing is Torque vectoring. Motors weigh and cost next to nothing in comparison to the battery or combustion engines.
You can have pretty much as many motors as you like, all coming with the advantages of precision control, torque from 0RPM, the ability to run freely without clutching and the ability to apply negative torque. All to individual wheels/axles.

I've driven the roadster and model S and both handle well and compare to the german competition. The only thing I dislike is the steering on the model S which is a bit vague.



*cough* prototype almost three years from volume production. Let's not judge just yet. For the record I'm not a fan of the prototype's interior either.



HEVs would technically belong in this forum. However they don't make any sense from an economic or technical standpoint.
I've direct experience in my day job of working with H2 fuel cells for certain remote and large scale applications.
They make sense for some purpose, but the last place they make sense is road transportation.

None of the car manufacturers have made anything close the the progress required on total roadblocks to practical HEVs. A not remotely exhaustive list:

The production cost of the stack (due to raw material costs not just production scale).

h2 production - 95% of which is currently from reformed natural gas.. this and my last point makes H2 expensive... around double the cost per km of petrol... and as much as 25 times higher than battery electric.

Safety issues due not least of which to high pressure requirement of storing usable quantities of H2 in acceptable volumes (want to see a Toyota engineer stop breathing? Ask them what happens if there's the tiniest flaw or damage to the COPV H2 tank). Not just confined to the vehicle itself, there are persistent safety issues throughout, largely down to H2 being a pain the arse to store and transfer (highly reactive gas, odourless, leaks through airtight seals, embrittles metals, reacts with many materials in common automotive use like rubber and certain plastics).

Refueling and infrastructure - 350kW rapid chargers being deployed right now are faster than H2 refueling. H2 refueling is not a simple process or even that quick, regardless of the sophistication of the H2 refueling station it's a lot more difficult, time-consuming and intolerant of errors/faults than pumping a liquid at atmospheric pressure. Other consequences of this include the inability to provide home refueling due to safety and cost issues which makes people reliant on a commercial infrastructure. And the commercial infrastructure? reliant on massive subsidies... how massive? Well you could buy 10-20 BEV rapid chargers for the cost of a single H2 pump. What commercial infrastructure has been built is unreliable in the extreme, many issues with the HEV lessees in california being unable to refuel their vehicles and having to leave them garaged for weeks or more due to all stations within range being out of operation.... meanwhile electricity is everywhere, the only issue is billing and allowing access.

Power output of automotive fuel cells is cack. Buffer batteries are required since the FCs operate fairly steady state. These buffer batteries are small to keep cost/volume/weight low... therefore discharge is low and they can't run powerful electric motors.

Degradation - not just of the fuel cell (parasitic reactions), issues with the entire h2 fuel system and how long it can be trusted without replacement or major overhaul/inspection. The Mirai for example has a "do not fuel after" date on the inside of the filler flap.

and the biggest issue of all... Efficiency... total system efficiency from electricity source (if using electrolysis... which you'd have to for it to be clean) to road surface not only 3-5 times lower than a battery EV, but also lower than some existing combustion vehicles (from the crude). There are substantial losses at every step in the chain all the way through H2 production and distribution <= many of these are inherent to the processes and materials involved and are unfixable (at least within the known laws of physics) and hands the cost of operation and TCO advantage to BEV

Apart from two projects well into the pipeline for ZEV credits, Hyundai has abandoned HEV development. Daimler's HEV team disbanded.
And the only reason Toyota & Honda have continued is the money being handed to them by the Japanese government (who have a madcap plan to mine ocean methane hydrates that will never (and should never) get off the ground) and the lack of another plan (though Akio Toyoda has set up a BEV development team headed by himself and has been poaching some of the best engineers from every project in sight).

I used think (and still see some use cases for) SOFC methane fuel cells would be good as range extender for long range electric HGVs.... Methane is much more energy dense and way easier to store and handle. but battery density and pricing has moved quicker than anticipated and for the limited remaining use cases it's not worth the development cost vs a diesel or petrol generator given that batteries would likely cover those edge cases too with the advent of any of the energy dense metal air chemistries.

HEVs are really just a combined delay tactic and PR exercise. Not something that has any future.