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Wasn't Tesla supposed to "probably" show off the Model 3 at the 2015 Detroit auto show? The last I heard about that was in December 2013, when there were some articles saying Tesla would show off their car then. Then sometime last summer the "Model 3" name came out, with a tiny bit of info about the car. But here we are in January 2015, with the Detroit auto show goings-on, but I haven't seen any mention about actually seeing the dang Model 3. I wanna see this car already
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Jan 20, 2015 22:53
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HJE-Cobra posted:Wasn't Tesla supposed to "probably" show off the Model 3 at the 2015 Detroit auto show? That's the first mention I've seen of one being there. If they've learned anything from the Model X, it's don't reveal things too early.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:30
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I was gonna say, I don't think they even showed off the Model X again, let alone the Model 3. They've done a very good job of not leaking anything about the 3, other than the ballpark price/range that its success hinges on.
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Jan 21, 2015 03:16
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Madurai posted:That's the first mention I've seen of one being there. If they've learned anything from the Model X, it's don't reveal things too early. Oh, this was just from some articles from like forever ago. Here's one of the old ones I dug up... http://www.autotrader.com/research/article/car-news/218158/cheaper-tesla-model-e-expected-to-debut-at-2015-detroit-show.jsp See, back from December 2013. I remember hearing about it at the time and making a mental note to check back during the Detroit Auto Show 2015. But alas, I guess they didn't show this year.
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Jan 21, 2015 15:22
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There was some speculation that Tesla may show production ready versions of the model X but it was just speculation. Nothing happened. Elon Musk did state recently that the Model 3 would not look like other cars. That's about the only thing that's been said aside from guides about price and range. I'm following it pretty keenly because I love their technology and design and the clarity of their approach. But there is no way I can justify a Model S particularly in Australia where they cost twice as much as the U.S. A Model 3 May be possible if they're released before my current car dies. In Australia the range anxiety is a bit different to anywhere else as the distances are huge like the US but the population density is low. They have announced a Supercharger network along the east coast but it's pretty minimal. So I've been thinking about Model 3 and how it can work. Obviously the battery pack will be smaller to keep the price down. A range of 300kms versus 450 for Model S. I wonder whether battery swapping becomes relevant. You buy a relatively low cost car with a relatively small battery but for long distance holiday driving you swap out for a bigger pack (for a price). Keeps the sticker price down, allows holiday driving, and lets Tesla plan the charger networks for the range of a Model S. It would also find a real world use for the clever battery swap tech. I have seen no discussion of this, so I am just flying kites.. It seems reasonable to me. What do others think?
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Jan 25, 2015 23:58
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Beffer posted:
I don't think battery swap in any form is ever going to come to the mass consumer market, it's an absolute inventory management nightmare. It could work well in a closed circuit, for instance on electric bus services where the vehicle itself can be tailor made for the swap cycle and the bus company can manage the packs, the swap stations and the routes to minute detail. For now, battery electrics will keep growing incrementally in range and in popularity. On the longer term, many things can happen - one thing I like is generating hydrogen from sea water using renewable electricity, then consuming that hydrogen either in fuel cell vehicles or internal combustion engines. It would work in jets as well, there's only the small matter of hydrogen storage to solve. Another thing I've seen, but know very little about, is storing electricity in a fluid. The term "electrolyte" seems the obvious choice, but I'm not sure if the electrolyte is the substance or just the medium. Anyway, you'd hook your car up to the station, it would drain your spent fluid and refill a fresh one full of electric potential. The spent fluid is then recharged at the station or by plugging in at home. No idea if it's feasible or not, but it sounds nice anyway.
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Jan 26, 2015 12:42
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Ola posted:Another thing I've seen, but know very little about, is storing electricity in a fluid. The term "electrolyte" seems the obvious choice, but I'm not sure if the electrolyte is the substance or just the medium. Anyway, you'd hook your car up to the station, it would drain your spent fluid and refill a fresh one full of electric potential. The spent fluid is then recharged at the station or by plugging in at home. No idea if it's feasible or not, but it sounds nice anyway. For your searching convenience, these are called “flow” batteries.
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Jan 26, 2015 13:30
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I'm really hoping flow batteries take off in a big way, too. I know there are some obvious issues to be solved with safety during refueling and the overall capacity of flow batteries, but the sheer convenience makes it definitely worth pursuing.
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Jan 26, 2015 14:08
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Ola posted:I don't think battery swap in any form is ever going to come to the mass consumer market, it's an absolute inventory management nightmare. It could work well in a closed circuit, for instance on electric bus services where the vehicle itself can be tailor made for the swap cycle and the bus company can manage the packs, the swap stations and the routes to minute detail. When you say inventory management is the problem, are you talking about the physical management of the packs or the inventory cost? Is there a reference to a discussion of this issue? It seems to me that the physical issue is similar to car rental inventory problems and a well understood market. The inventory cost is something that could be modeled pretty easily and perhaps that's where it falls over. The biggest problem to my mind is that usage will not be evenly distributed but rather will peak hugely during school holidays when everyone is suddenly making road trips. So to meet demand you need to have excess inventory for most of the year. I may be entirely misunderstanding your point, so I'd appreciate any extra info. Cheers.
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Jan 26, 2015 21:37
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In addition to all those things there's also the overall mass and bulk of the packs themselves - each one probably weights 500-800 lbs if not more. As for flow batteries, the biggest problem is the same problem as for all battery evs - power density / specific power. And while we can always hope for future improvements, in general battery technology is very slow to develop and there doesn't seem to be any promising developments on the horizon.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:25
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I think the biggest problem for anything other than slow charging at home at night is going to be the grid. It's staggering how much power is going to have to be flowing into any sort of station geared toward quick range restoration of an electric vehicle. It doesn't matter HOW that range is getting into the cars (battery swap, electrolyte swap, supercharging). What matters is how the station is going to get enough electricity to keep up with demand on a busy corridor. Think of the number of vehicles that refuel on a service station along any interstate in a busy travel corridor. Even if they could swap batteries out in 3 minutes, how are they going to be able to charge and turnaround those batteries to another customer without having a HUGE inventory on hand that they are slow charging. The less inventory they keep on hand, faster charging is going to be needed on the inventory on hand and more power is going to needed at the station.
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Jan 26, 2015 22:51
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bull3964 posted:I think the biggest problem for anything other than slow charging at home at night is going to be the grid. It's staggering how much power is going to have to be flowing into any sort of station geared toward quick range restoration of an electric vehicle. Think of it this way: if we could transport oil in wires, we would. Compared to pipelines or trains, it’s no contest in terms of per joule or per kilometre. It’s an investment, but one that will pay off.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:43
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Platystemon posted:Think of it this way: if we could transport oil in wires, we would. Compared to pipelines or trains, it’s no contest in terms of per joule or per kilometre. The big difference is that you can store oil. You can't really store electricyt (without losing mos tof it).
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Jan 27, 2015 16:12
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Just spit balling here... This is probably dumb as hell... What if a hypothetical future charging station used very high efficiency electric motor/generators to spin a very large flywheel situated on site. When a vehicle came in requiring a recharge, that stored energy was returned through the motor generators to the batteries in the car. In that way, the flywheel can be constantly topped up with energy from the grid when there are no cars charging, and be ready to go when one turns up.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:22
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Linedance posted:Just spit balling here... This is probably dumb as hell... Flywheels in theory are highly efficient but in practice, much much less so. Right now, they're bad at long-term energy storage and if you wanted to charge off-peak and store until the day, you'd need a system that can manage to do that for at least 5-6 hours. Also you're talking some significant losses with every conversion between electrical to mechanical back to electrical energy. The other issue is that what you've just built is potentially a massive bomb. Battery charge rates are usually limited by the battery, not the inputs, and faster charging usually means reduced lifespan for the battery itself due to increased thermal and other stresses. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 16:32
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Mange Mite posted:Flywheels in theory are highly efficient but in practice, much much less so. Right now, they're bad at long-term energy storage and if you wanted to charge off-peak and store until the day, you'd need a system that can manage to do that for at least 5-6 hours. Also you're talking some significant losses with every conversion between electrical to mechanical back to electrical energy. I was wondering about efficiency losses. Although it's likely minimal to insignificant, I wonder how much efficiency, that is to say joules of potential energy, is lost through evaporation, spoilage, and unusable fuel in the storage tanks when it comes to liquid fuel? Just purely out of curiosity. As for a big bomb, a storage tank full of gasoline could also be described as such, though if the flywheel went off it would involve less mushroom cloud of firey explosion, so it loses in that regard.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:52
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Linedance posted:I was wondering about efficiency losses. Although it's likely minimal to insignificant, I wonder how much efficiency, that is to say joules of potential energy, is lost through evaporation, spoilage, and unusable fuel in the storage tanks when it comes to liquid fuel? Just purely out of curiosity. If you're talking full-cycle efficiency it's a very difficult determination since you have to take into account the costs of shipping (storage losses are most likely minimal) but suffice it to say almost certainly nothing close to what you'd see in terms of conversion losses. You can't easily store electrical energy, right now the most common ways to use/store off-peak energy is to use it to make fertilizer or smelt aluminum. Also I don't think you understand how violent flywheel failures can be. It's relatively easy for almost all the kinetic energy to get dumped at once, and a whole lot of that energy gets going in the form of high-velocity shrapnel (instead of heat and, if things are absolutely perfect, a pressure wave). You can mitigate this with various safety features (e.g., build it underground) but that again adds to the cost. It takes a lot more things lining up/going wrong to release that percent of stored energy that quickly from something like gasoline, especially since gasoline storage is a mature technology. BTW I'm not saying they're actually dangerous if properly designed, especially modern designs that use magnetic bearings and operate in vacuum, but the necessary safety features add to the cost. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 17:34
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bull3964 posted:I think the biggest problem for anything other than slow charging at home at night is going to be the grid. It's staggering how much power is going to have to be flowing into any sort of station geared toward quick range restoration of an electric vehicle. It doesn't matter HOW that range is getting into the cars (battery swap, electrolyte swap, supercharging). What matters is how the station is going to get enough electricity to keep up with demand on a busy corridor. I think time/place of charge is going to have brutal pricing tiers. It's cheap to charge your EV at home, it might cost $50 on the side of an interstate if you stop at a busy time.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:39
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Beffer posted:When you say inventory management is the problem, are you talking about the physical management of the packs or the inventory cost? Is there a reference to a discussion of this issue? Yes, the physical management. I haven't seen any good analysis, just talking out of my own charging port here. But I do believe it will be a problem. The rental car industry can teach it some lessons, probably many other businesses as well. But the price of battery packs, how much insured value is out on the streets at any given time, how much stock you need to keep to handle peaks, service rural areas etc etc. There's so much that need to be in place for it to be smooth and if things start falling apart, the entire driving nation grinds to a halt. If it was something you did once a year when the high density, short life battery was worn out, perhaps. But swapping three times in a day when you are driving home for Christmas? Of course, it could be that it was a limited thing you paid extra for at rare times but you normally relied on charging it yourself. And it would help balance the loads as the packs could be charged at night. Some fancy computer systems talking to your cars navigation could tell you to swap a battery at place X for a discount (or a waived fee) instead of Y due to charged batteries running out at Y. It seems so attractive, the type of logistical ballet city planners like. But the real world is messy and people don't give a poo poo, much better to rely on battery chemistry giving sufficient range for people's needs and leaving them to sort out the charging themselves. Balancing load on the grid can be done in many ways, I'm not sure I'd want massive flywheels all around the city. One thing you could do at the power station level is pump water up into a reservoir at night and then let it drive a turbine during the day.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:40
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Ola posted:Yes, the physical management. I haven't seen any good analysis, just talking out of my own charging port here. But I do believe it will be a problem. The rental car industry can teach it some lessons, probably many other businesses as well. But the price of battery packs, how much insured value is out on the streets at any given time, how much stock you need to keep to handle peaks, service rural areas etc etc. There's so much that need to be in place for it to be smooth and if things start falling apart, the entire driving nation grinds to a halt. If it was something you did once a year when the high density, short life battery was worn out, perhaps. But swapping three times in a day when you are driving home for Christmas? You'd just bury them underground (the flywheels), surrounded in concrete. Probably have some kind of kinetic absorption foam or goo that fills the chamber if there's a catastrophic failure. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it's an idea.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:54
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Ola posted:Balancing load on the grid can be done in many ways, I'm not sure I'd want massive flywheels all around the city. One thing you could do at the power station level is pump water up into a reservoir at night and then let it drive a turbine during the day. Yeah I saw a proposal about that too and someone ran the numbers, they were pretty bad in terms of efficiency and more practically it would take forever to recoup the likely costs of building it in the first place. Better off finding ways to reduce output.
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Jan 27, 2015 21:29
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Reservoir pumped storage (built new today) is really only economical in situations where you can build very big reservoirs (like 10s of thousands of ac-ft) in very steep places (with elevation differences measured in thousands of feet). edit: Like this. withak fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 21:54
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It's been talked about a bit here in Norway since we have so much hydroelectric power, but there are certainly disadvantages as you rightly point out. It's quite simple really, it's economical as long as the deficit in electric energy is made up for by the swing of the energy price. There are many many other ways of storing energy like this, compressed air, heated salt, etc etc. Another way to balance load is to build a lot of solar power. They are idle at night and active during the day with none of the shutdown issues associated with coal and nuclear.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:29
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In Scandinavia they do this by tapping into existing high mountain lakes with a tunnel drilled up from underneath. You dig the tunnel as close to the lake bottom as you dare, then seal off the downstream end of the tunnel and blast open the bottom of the lake.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:36
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I thought there were power stations that already used flywheel storage?
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Jan 28, 2015 01:38
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In my opinion, the real issue is the massive inefficiency of *everything else*. I'm in the utility field, and it is absolutely astonishing how much energy the average person wastes. I wonder how much could be saved if every house went cfl/led lighting, and used a programmable thermostat to keep HVAC run time at a minimum.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:33
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Well, in that regard, when we bought our house I swapped everything to fluorescents (and as those are dying I'm going LED) and bought a much fancier programmable thermostat than the previous owners were using. Even with the thermostat set 4*F higher while we're home and charging an EV, we still use less electricity. A LOT less. Somehow we also use 200 gallons less heating oil per year, too. I'm really not sure what the heck they were doing. We've sealed and foamed a few places but not THAT much... As far as quick charging stations are concerned, also remember that there are legalities that make them even more expensive. Our local power company would have to have their tariff changed to avoid billing a gigantic 'demand charge' every month. They are required to maintain duplicate generation for 100% of the system and the demand charge is essentially a doubling of a commercial customer's capacity. A quick charge station could theoretically just be shut off in event of the diesel back-ups needing to come online but that would still need a changing of the tariff. The only way to avoid that would be having enough battery backup to enable a smooth flow throughout each 24-hour period - and even then you're paying demand charges on the constant usage.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:55
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withak posted:Reservoir pumped storage (built new today) is really only economical in situations where you can build very big reservoirs (like 10s of thousands of ac-ft) in very steep places (with elevation differences measured in thousands of feet). “Such a plant would be 80 percent efficient, which means it uses 100 megawatts to make 80 watts.” 
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Jan 28, 2015 02:58
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Close enough. What's a few orders of magnitude between friends?
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Jan 28, 2015 03:06
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withak posted:In Scandinavia they do this by tapping into existing high mountain lakes with a tunnel drilled up from underneath. You dig the tunnel as close to the lake bottom as you dare, then seal off the downstream end of the tunnel and blast open the bottom of the lake. Umm no.
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Jan 28, 2015 07:12
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Umm yes. It's called the Norwegian method, perhaps you have heard of it. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=norwegian+lake+tap edit: Americans have tried it but we just end up making it too complicated. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=thistle%20lake%20tap withak fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 07:20
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No I haven't. The hits refer to a blasting technique, which is fine, sure. But you don't drill up to the bottom of a preexisting lake to build a hydroelectric plant. You dam up a valley so all the small lakes can become a big one. Then you channel the water from the dam through tunnels (built dry) and pipes down to you power plant.
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Jan 28, 2015 07:52
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Our newest hydroelectric project: Lake Dorothy, deepest lake tap to date.
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Jan 28, 2015 08:32
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No need to go through the hassle of building a dam if you already have a high-altitude lake. If you say "norwegian method" then everyone in the tunneling/hydropower industry knows exactly what you are talking about.
withak fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 13:27
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I guess I misunderstood, sorry. You've described a great way to punch a hole in a lake, I meant that simply punching a hole in a lake isn't enough to make a good power plant. Dams, tunnels, moving rivers, draining some lakes dry, creating artificial ones etc is all part of it. For that reason hydroelectric power has been criticized much in the past for the intervention in nature, loss of scenic waterfalls, salmon rivers and so on. But when it comes to cheap, carbon free energy, they're hard to beat. Here's an example of one power plant, which is really a mountain turned into swiss cheese to connect many reservoirs and pipe them to multiple power stations.   Blåsjø, "blue lake", a 33 sq mi artificial lake created by damming up a valley which used to have many small lakes in it. A few of the power plants, including one associated with this lake, has the capability of pumping water uphill to store it when demand is low. It's funny how poo poo weather is such a great source of energy.
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Jan 28, 2015 14:15
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Do Norwegian engineers get a truckload of dynamite the day they graduate? Or do you all just HATE mountains? It seems like Norwegians are the most tunnel-happy people in the world. Don't get me wrong: for taking to Mr. Nobel's invention with such enthusiasm, I salute you!
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Jan 28, 2015 17:55
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ExecuDork posted:Do Norwegian engineers get a truckload of dynamite the day they graduate? Or do you all just HATE mountains? It seems like Norwegians are the most tunnel-happy people in the world.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:23
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Good point by InitialDave. Western Norway is "the land of a thousand tunnels". Some of the projects are very impressive, corkscrews, subsea etc. But the way they did it in the olden days was quite impressive as well:
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Jan 28, 2015 22:15
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You also have the craziest roads.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:26
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Ola posted:Good point by InitialDave. Western Norway is "the land of a thousand tunnels". Some of the projects are very impressive, corkscrews, subsea etc. But the way they did it in the olden days was quite impressive as well: Must have been so frustrating to be 200ft away from something, and yet still have an hour to walk.
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Jan 29, 2015 02:04
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