2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S

[zilo]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Is it possible to charge a fully electric car with the sort of solar setup the average person would have on their roof? In a reasonable amount of time? Could be a problem seeing as how most people would, I assume, charge it off peak in the middle of the night.

Battery pack replacement...that's been a sore point ever since the Prius first came out. The wall of silence you meet if you dare bring up the taboo question is deafening...of course, it's not an issue for the first owner, but any subsequent owners would surely have to have it in the back of their mind...what's the resale like on a Prius anyway...?

I have 20kw of panels....those on the free govt scheme cannot even come close with 1kw
I could easily power the Tesla charge cycle and all the house.

In terms of the batteries, the Prius charges and discharges many times an hour, due to its on board generator.
The Tesla just discharges, (apart from regen braking).

battery life is measured in charge/discharge cycles, so expect the Tesla battery pack to last longer me thinks

[Rodge]

Originally Posted by flappist

I am not sure what you are saying here.

Do you think that a 100kW petrol engined car demonstrates 100kW at all times regardless of load or RPM?

If it takes 17kWh to move the vehicle 75km in one hour it does not matter how that energy is obtained.

Of course I realise cars crusing along on the open road arn't demanding much energy from their motors but in this vehicles case it would appear there are considerable energy delivery efficiencies, (zero driveline energy losses ?), as well as the obvious aerodynamic efficiencies of a 0.24 coefficient of drag. I just find it remarkable that a vehicle of this size can be shifted that far for the very modest energy consumed.

That said I think you make some good points regarding technology redundency and your example of analogue Plasma T.V.'s costing $10,000 originally, (yes I got caught up by that) is n especially good one.

I doubt the vehicle will have much retained value at the ten year point, (but not many vehicles do), and doubt the batteries will last that long. There's another point that hasn't been raised here and that's how the batteries performance, (range), diminishes over time. I hear talk that some Lexus hybrid owners arn't happy with the way their batteries performance is diminishing as they age.

I can't see anywhere on Tesla's website where they're offerring a special warranty on the battery like Toyota does, (8 years) unless I'm missing something it seems the car as a whole is just covered by their standard warranty of 4 years 50,000 miles.

Lastly, from what I can see here, yeap, once a hybrid vehicle is outside its batteries warranty period it certainly appears potential owners are factoring in replacement battery prices into the equation. Not really a problem with a Honda Civic mild hybrid, (my wife's shopping basket), where the battery replacement is I understand a very reasonable $900 but I hear Toyota N.Z. are asking $8,000 for a replacement battery for Mk1 versions of the Prius

[mik]

you can bet all these range figures are best case scenario, imo they are still no real opposition to a internal combustion engine, the hybrid seems to be the only logical cheap alternative to the conventional motor car at the moment.

[zilo]

In the Tesla I drove an individual battery was able to be replaced, not the whole lot.

They have diagnostics that point straight to a coordinate system of cells and it pin points a single cell failure.

In fact anyone who knows anything about modern day electric cars,(not hybrids) can tell you that each cell has a BMS module that sits on top of it and can flash a red LED to show even a monkey which cell is bad.

[zilo]

Found this article about tesla building supercharger stations.

Full charge from zero in 30 minutes.

30 minutes isn't too long to wait every 3 hours or so.

http://www.carpoint.com.au/news/2012...-network-32944

[danthefordman]

Originally Posted by Fiesta_Man69

Who is selling them in Aus? What kind of factory support do they have? What's the expectant life of the batteries and how much are they replace? Range with 5 ppl on board? Recharge time?

I still remember the Top Gear test of Tesla..... Yes, it's a few years on but...

There's plenty of I6 Falcons out there with half a million km on them with on basic services done.... I wonder how much it would cost to get one of these to such a distance?

The future is hydrogen: works fine in California and much better for the environment than an electric car.

What about the energy cost of hydrogen production? Isn't it a very energy intensive process to produce?