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“There’s a new world coming, no more gasoline.” Yup, eventually.
“Tight” and “unbelievable” seem to be the operative words. I remain a Tesla doubter, the performance/safety window requires excellent drivers, and the drain on the battery pack from all those “unbelievable” blasts of power will be a challenge on longevity.
http://www.snooth.com/talk/topic/another-tesla-crash/
“Imagine a day when all cars are electric, it will be a cleaner, safer, better world,” is the sign-off to this video.
And the answer is, no, not necessarily. Electricity does not come out of thin air (unless you build some major windmills to harvest energy.) The laws of physics prevail, and they dictate that in order to perform work, energy is required. Electric cars can improve matters, but they will not eradicate the problems associated with generating the energy needed to run them. This is not a minor point – a lot of people are getting this part of the equation wrong.
Some truth to it, though. We won’t be transporting fuel to gas stations, to then pump it into small gas tanks — instead, the fuel will be used to generate the electricity that the grid will pipe to charge points. Just getting the tankers off roads will add to the “safer” claim in the sign-off.
(And if you’re wondering why hydrogen has been the darling of car makers and oil companies: having invested zillions in the gas/oil distribution infrastructure, they’d like to just replace that with another liquid. Having electricity leapfrog their investment is not very appealing, presto: hydrogen.)
At any rate – my money’s on Aptera’s approach. Ten years from now, driving will be fun again, for real.
It’s tight. Very tight, It’s a tight experience, It’s tight like a race car. It’s really tight. Did I say it was tight. It’s an outer world experience. It’s a rocket ship.
He say’s he is the 1st journalist to have a tesla in NY. Hmmm, left out a bunch of stuff. How far did he go on a charge? How long did it take to re-charge. Or maybe just a real unbiased review. Ohh, it appears that he is promoting the electric car industry. That makes him a REAL journalist.
Is it fun to torture minimum wage pump jockeys in the cold?
These folks are in dire need of video editing skills. Nearly ten minutes for three minutes of information?
I’m a big fan of electric cars; I believe they will play a growing role. Tesla’s importance at this point is as a proof of concept (regardless of what it proves or doesn’t–your opinion may vary).
Cars like the Corbin/Myers Sparrow, Tesla Roadster, and Aptera are the incunabula of a technology emerging into a tangle of policy constraints and expectations shaped by decades of cheap fossil fuels. We can do a service to the entire dialogue about electric and alternative fuel vehicles by keeping that perspective.
Good luck getting off of oil just like that Mr. (as he himself) “like a journalist”. I can’t think of much anything in my day to day life that oil isn’t related to? Maybe coal generated electricity? I hope he’s okay with that option to power his electric car! LOL
Wow. That was terrible. And why bring the car through the gas station, only to annoy the pump attendant?
This video is the cinematic definition of “Fanboy”.
I’m starting up a fund for this guy so he can buy a thesaurus, so that he can look up synonyms for the term “tight.”
“They’re lettin’ me drive it. I’m, like, a journalist.”
Coulda fooled me, buddy. Coulda fooled me.
Much as I hate the expression, ‘LOL’…
LOL
That is all.
Jesus, has this guy ever driven a car before? Also, he explained the concept of the electric car to that black dude like the dude was an 8-year-old kid. “It’s electric! So no gas! You don’t need gas to drive this car!” Then, he’s accelerating, and he’s all, “WHOOOOOOOOOA! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOA!”
Man did this dude look like a dope. And what a douche for driving it to the gas station and then incredulously explaining to the attendant that “there’s no gas tank in here! It’s a battery! So no gas! No!”
Man I wanted to punch that dude. The Tesla was new and fresh about 3 years ago – cross-eyed blabbering about the marvel of an electric car is pretty passe.
And the answer is, no, not necessarily. Electricity does not come out of thin air (unless you build some major windmills to harvest energy.) The laws of physics prevail, and they dictate that in order to perform work, energy is required. Electric cars can improve matters, but they will not eradicate the problems associated with generating the energy needed to run them. This is not a minor point – a lot of people are getting this part of the equation wrong.
If you want to talk science:
Thermodynamic efficiency of a (gasoline) internal combustion engine: ~20%
Thermodynamic efficiency of a large coal burning power plant: ~50%
Efficiency of electric motors/batteries is around 95%.
If every car right now were running from electricity produced by coal power plants there would be a net reduction in emissions, pollutions, and energy waste. Period.
That is all.
Thank you Tesla, thank you God, thank you father, thank you. No need to blame the guy though- the internet is full of “journalists” like him. Not that it gets better at print media. I still remember a (european) review last year starting: “I had the honour(!!) to drive the…”
@GeeDashOff
Yes and no. In fact, I’ve seen even lower numbers for the thermodynamic efficiency of ICE, down to 9%. So not quibbling with you there.
And the energy efficiency of electric is vastly better, ideally at the ranges you specify.
One does have to factor in battery manufacture and disposal, however – which does not look as nice.
But there’s little doubt that generating the energy at power plants, and then distributing it to EVs, which will run clean compared to ICE, is potentially both more efficient and cleaner.
The point of my post was that the energy has to come from somewhere, that’s impossible to change. If you listen to both this report, and that of people a lot more informed than this “journalist,” then the term independence from foreign oil crops up, always. EVs are no guarantee of that.
Moving the mass represented by 200 million motorists and their vehicles will require a lot of energy; and moving from ICE to EV will likewise be an enormous undertaking, with considerable expense, all around.
That said – it’s where we’re headed.
“Unbelievable” “tight” !!!!!!!!!
who IS this guy?
“who IS this guy?”
He’s a neurologist, apparently: Lyle Dennis bio
By the time the world runs out of gas… we’ll have found a reasonably efficient way to make gasoline. Or we’ll run on alcohol not from cornstuffs, or biodiesel (which really is in the same vein as the “making gas” statement above), or recapturing carbon from the emissions and recombining it back into complex carbon chains (uh, making gas, again). There are plenty of people who want electric vehicles, but those people and their vehicles might not survive -32 in their heat-less electric cars. Maybe we’ll get serious about attacking that 20% efficiency of the gasoline engine?
Oh for Pete’s sake can you not see that this is a GM PR production, purposely dumbed down to look like an unbiased amateur car review. Nice touch of authenticity with his buddy wiring up the 220v plug in their crap filled garage. A lot of time and money was spent making this video look cheap and honest.
that was awful.
this d-bag:
1. wastes > 1 min on a useless intro
2. compares the engine to a spaceship b/c:
a) he has driven one
b) everyone knows how a spaceship drives like
3. treats the black dude like an idiot
4. yells out crap so you can’t hear the cabin noise
5. drives into a gas station for no apparent reason, other than to make the attendant look like a fool (of course, the attendant happens to be a minority)
6. makes a bizarre conclusion that equates electric cars to a “safer” world
Dr. Dennis, if you are reading this, kindly restrain yourself from shaming the profession any further.
The guy is Lyle Dennis who runs GM-Volt.com.