[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
It’s still zero emissions from the car, no matter how you paint it. Sure, it isn’t ENTIRELY emission-free when taking into account how much emissions are produced making it. But there isn’t a car on the road that was made emission-free in that sense. This car is simply emission-free after production.
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Even after production emissions are being released to power it. I could equally bottle all the exhaust from an ICE car, then pay someone to take the bottles away, same “zero” emission. I will say that the electric car provides for the future ability to go Zero emissions, but until we are running the power grid on solar/wind/nuclear/new technology, it’s still producing emissions to drive it. And many people are to dumb not to realize it.
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By the way, I don’t know where you get your info from about the Tesla, but from everything I’ve read you’re entirely wrong on the price and the distance one can drive with it. The base price of a Model S is $62,000. That’s not cheap, but there is clearly a burgeoning market for it regardless.
The driving range is still not that good, but it’s more than double than 100-mile figure you stated, even if you get the lower-end battery. Most people who can afford a car that costs $62K already have another car, and only an idiot would buy this as their sole vehicle. So it’s perfect for daily driving or reasonable commute times. If the owner needs to go on a trip of some length, they can use their other vehicle.
As far as driving at a high rate of speed all the time, sure, if you do so the battery drains much faster. But the fact is that the demographic most able to afford this car and most likely to buy one simply does not drive at a high rate of speed. The same could be said of virtually any high-performance luxury vehicle. Look at any driving-related fatality statistics you want. Every indication is that young people are FAR more likely to die in a high-speed crash than older people are. So while what you said is true, I think the point is a bit moot.
Driverless cars are actually the wave of the near-future. I think these Teslas are probably more of a stop-gap until we get there. But since Google is the one developing the technology for driverless cars and is based in the same area as Tesla Motors (Silicon Valley), and given that Google is more likely to simply contract the technology out to a car manufacturer rather than start building vehicles themselves, Tesla is also in perfect position to be the benefactor of this major shift in the way we transport ourselves in the future.
You sound like people who were against cars when they first came out. Just keep cruising around town on top of your horse, Pat.[/quote]
I’d also ask, are you talking about cost, or cost to consumer? 2 different things in the electric car market.[/quote]
Like I said, it’s a work in progress and hasn’t achieved perfection yet, or anything close to it.
I’m sure there were a lot of people 100 years ago who were skeptical about the impact cars would have on society since there weren’t really any gas stations around or much of an infrastructure to support the use of cars and horses could still travel much further before “refueling”.
The $62000 cost I referred to is the price that consumers pay for a base model Tesla S. If you are talking about the cost to the consumer when factoring in carbon emissions from producing the vehicle or the cost over the long haul from subsidizing the company to the tune of a roughly $450 million low-interest loan, I don’t know what that comes out to.
I’m not really into the govt subsidizing things, but if it IS going to subsidize shit, this is a pretty good thing to fund. First of all, Tesla is ahead of schedule in terms of paying it back, they’re turning a profit, they are making money for their shareholders, and they are still a very small operation. They’re only producing a few thousand cars per year right now, but based on financial projections (the same ones that conservatively underestimated the speed at which Tesla would reach the point they are at right now) the cost of the vehicle will drop down by almost 50% within just a couple years. It’s conceivable that within 5 years the car that costs $62000 now will cost $40000 and also go much further per battery charge.
The way I look at it, this is an investment that the govt made back in 2007 that is paying off much sooner than anticipated, and perhaps to larger degree in the long run than was ever anticipated.