Question/Answer: Why doesn’t the government invest heavily into Tesla Motors?
May 15th, 2013 Filed under: Affordable Used Cars — Car Author
Here a good question I found in the comments section of a previous post. 'John' asks us the question:It might just be their genius marketing abilities, but to me, Tesla Motors seems to be the smartest car company for our age out right now. By best, I mean averaged sized cars that have many of the capabilities of normal cars, some better, and they do it all through 100% electricity. To me, they seem to be doing better than any other car company at building cars and a strong business. But that's what I've seen through the internet, I haven't actually been to one of their stores. So, why doesn't the government help out this company that seems to be doing everything right? I mean in a couple years, they'll be rolling out cars in the more affordable 30,000-40,000 range that is all-electric. Just build more electric producing plants. Energy problems, solved.No are you guys idiots? This thing has five years or 100,000 mile battery life and about 248 peak horsepower. Can you look the stuff up first before associating Tesla Motors with any other electric car company? http://www.teslamotors.com/performance/perf_specs.php
Answer: Because it doesn't work.If you plug all these cars into your house or whatever to "charge" them the load would be so massive you would have brown outs everywhere.Then you have to take into account how far you can even get with the car. Battery tech is not that good. How many movies can you watch on a lap top before it dies on you... my guess is maybe 1. Your talking about a car here.1 HorsePower is 0.746 KILO watts. That means 20 horsepower is 15,000 watts. Could you imagine all the traffic stuck at the next charging station to take what would probably be hours to charge there vehicles?Plus you have to get the power from somewhere.. All those plants need to use coal, or fuel, or some other combustible source of energy that can be found in massive quantities. Nuclear power would solve this to a certain extent but you still haven't gotten around the whole "how do I get to work 1 hour away with an electric car".Sorry, but if it was as easy as the idiots on T.V. make it sound.. Those of us who actually got out of high school science and proceeded in that direction would have done it.*Edit*The car seats 2 people. Thats it. In addition the weight of a person/s will effect the overall range at which the car will travel. I would venture that the calculation of 220 miles is on either an empty car, or a car with a light person in it. Without them specifying though it's impossible to tell. But with a vested interest in the success of there product I would say 220 miles is on the high end.Even then 220 miles is about half of what a standered small car can go before needing to refill. That means at it's listed travel length it can only go for about 3.5 hours before needing to recharge for yet another 3.5 hours. I live in D.C. and can tell you most people travel at least an hour and a half to work. That's 3 hours of your 3.5. A great deal of this is spent on the belt way were traffic can easily be backed up for 3 hours by itself. Is the heat or air on when they tested the cars "average traveling distance"? How many people were in the car? How much do they weigh? What temperature extremes have they tested it in? What about people who need to drive large vehicals for there job? What about people in apartments that can't have an entire "home charging staion"? How are people going to recharge on a long trip seings how it takes 3.5 hours and takes an entire charging station per car? What will it do to your electric bill compared to how much the gas would cost? How much is a 1000 pound battery going to cost you after 100,000 miles? They don't address the massive load on an electrical grid. What happens when everyone in NYC is charging there car? Brown out?If you only have 1 or two people that need to use the car, don't drive hours too, or for work, don't need a larger vehical, own a house, and live in an area who's weather won't effect the performance... I'd say fine.. but as it stands.. for most Americans.. it doesn't work.30 dollars a week in gas. $15,000 car is $16,440. Subtract 109,000 for the car is $92,560 swing for the first year. Spending 30 dollars a week on gas is 1440 a year for gas expense. $92,560/($1440per year) is me breaking even after 64.3 years. Thats of course not factoring in the cost to charge the car or replace the battery 13 times. On top of everything I mentioned above.And you're calling me an idiot?
Tagged:Government
'Jackie' asks a great question so I thought I'd post it here with an answer - enjoy:
