another tesla on fire

[98valk]

this time no accident, just sitting in traffic.   responses from tesla are insane. but all of our tax money given to tesla which allows them to build these jokes, causes stupid comments.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5852195/Actress-Mary-McCormack-claims-husbands-Tesla-Model-S-spontaneously-combusted.html

[Gavin_Sons]

no wonder they are cutting 9% of their jobs

[98valk]

no wonder they are cutting 9% of their jobs

yep.   did u ever read how him and his wife were playing some kind of money shuffle tax game by getting divorced and remarried a few times, both times with full court divorce and all the assets divided.
make that money puzzle complicated so the irs gives up?

[Gavin_Sons]

no wonder they are cutting 9% of their jobs

yep.   did u ever read how him and his wife were playing some kind of money shuffle tax game by getting divorced and remarried a few times, both times with full court divorce and all the assets divided.
make that money puzzle complicated so the irs gives up?

Hey, my wife and I have thought about divorcing just so she will get assistance and housing while i play the deadbeat dad.  Those people that play the system eat better than I do. I could never do that because i don't like taking handouts from anyone. I'm proud of what i have achieved.

[Wizzard]

Sounds like you all are wanting him to fail. I don't want to be dependent on foreign oil forever. How many cheverolets and fords failed back in the day when they were developed. No one knows since social media did not exist. It's simple,, if you do not like it, don't buy it. I like his vision, especially in space advancement.

[98valk]

Sounds like you all are wanting him to fail. I don't want to be dependent on foreign oil forever. How many cheverolets and fords failed back in the day when they were developed. No one knows since social media did not exist. It's simple,, if you do not like it, don't buy it. I like his vision, especially in space advancement.

The taxpayer funds for Musk’s various endeavors come at the federal and state levels. Perhaps the most well-known beneficiary of government help is Tesla, which received $465 million in loans under the government’s $8.4 billion Advanced Vehicle Technology Manufacturing program.

That’s the thrust of an investigative story in the Los Angeles Times this weekend. The Times concludes that based on the data they obtained, SpaceX, Tesla Motors and Solar City have benefitted from a combined $4.9 billion in government support.

[Wizzard]

In reality,, if you wanted to start a business and the gov't wanted to help you, what would you do?

I read this as you are angry he failed since he has used gov't funding. So if he failed on his own that would be no problem!

[Gavin_Sons]

I got part of that government money. We have built several robot cells for them. I don't want to see them fail. I like to concept. Like Wizzard said, how many other auto manufacturers have had problems and no one knows about it.

[98valk]

Dozens of reports are available on the ecological impact of lithium mining. Unfortunately, many of them are influenced by the perspective of the organizations or authors releasing them. Reducing the available information to studies carried out by government bodies and research institutes around the world, a picture emerges nonetheless:

    Elemental lithium is flammable and very reactive. In nature, lithium occurs in compounded forms such as lithium carbonate requiring chemical processing to be made usable.
    Lithium is typically found in salt flats in areas where water is scarce. The mining process of lithium uses large amounts of water. Therefore, on top of water contamination as a result of its use, depletion or transportation costs are issues to be dealt with. Depletion results in less available water for local populations, flora and fauna.
    Toxic chemicals are used for leaching purposes, chemicals requiring waste treatment. There are widespread concerns of improper handling and spills, like in other mining operations around the world.
    The recovery rate of lithium ion batteries, even in first world countries, is in the single digit percent range. Most batteries end up in landfill.
    In a 2013 report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) points out that nickel and cobalt, both also used in the production of lithium ion batteries, represent significant additional environmental risks.

A 2012 study titled “Science for Environment Policy” published by the European Union compares lithium ion batteries to other types of batteries available (lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal-hydride and sodium sulphur). It concludes that lithium ion batteries have the largest impact on metal depletion, suggesting that recycling is complicated. Lithium ion batteries are also, together with nickel-metal-hydride batteries, the most energy consuming technologies using the equivalent of 1.6kg of oil per kg of battery produced. They also ranked the worst in greenhouse gas emissions with up to 12.5kg of CO2 equivalent emitted per kg of battery.

[98valk]

Tesla has been clever in other ways, too. It sells credits it receives from the state of California for producing zero emissions vehicles to other automakers that aren't so clean. At up to $35,000 per vehicle,

[Wizzard]

Tesla has been clever in other ways, too. It sells credits it receives from the state of California for producing zero emissions vehicles to other automakers that aren't so clean. At up to $35,000 per vehicle,

Sounds to me like you just got a chip on your shoulder for Tesla and Musk. You better do some research on the other car manuf, and find out how much money they got from the govt. You got your way we could all be walking.

[Varmintmist]

If we got the govt out of it we could have 50mpg gasoline internal combustion engines like we had in the 80's and do away with throwing money away at ideas that are not marketable.
Put it this way, how many people would buy electric cars if the were not A. discounted by the taxpayer on the production end. and B. the purchase price was not artificially held down by everyone else paying for a portion of it in tax rebates.

[98valk]

If we got the govt out of it we could have 50mpg gasoline internal combustion engines like we had in the 80's and do away with throwing money away at ideas that are not marketable.
Put it this way, how many people would buy electric cars if the were not A. discounted by the taxpayer on the production end. and B. the purchase price was not artificially held down by everyone else paying for a portion of it in tax rebates.

 

[¿spoom]

I got part of that government money. We have built several robot cells for them. I don't want to see them fail. I like to concept. Like Wizzard said, how many other auto manufacturers have had problems and no one knows about it.

I don't want to see them fail, either, I just don't to be paying for cars I'm not driving. 

[Alberta Patriot]

A far better idea is Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars. Make those Ugly Wind Farms Earn their  Government Subsidies and spin them 24/7/365 to split water into Hydrogen And Oxygen...send the Hydrogen Along With Shiny New Hydrogen Pumps to the service stations that are already on every corner for the Shiny New Fuel Cell Cars that don't need overnight to charge. BTW send the Oxygen along with plenty of Masks to the EPA. They need the extra help.  

[98valk]

A far better idea is Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars. Make those Ugly Wind Farms Earn their  Government Subsidies and spin them 24/7/365 to split water into Hydrogen And Oxygen...send the Hydrogen Along With Shiny New Hydrogen Pumps to the service stations that are already on every corner for the Shiny New Fuel Cell Cars that don't need overnight to charge. BTW send the Oxygen along with plenty of Masks to the EPA. They need the extra help.  

wind farms another failed idea. very high expense and high so called pollution to build and maintain them. without taxpayer money they would have never happened.   
HFC cars will need oil to make hydrogen at hydrogen plants then there is the problem in colder temps ice all over the roads from the exhaust.

[Alberta Patriot]

A far better idea is Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars. Make those Ugly Wind Farms Earn their  Government Subsidies and spin them 24/7/365 to split water into Hydrogen And Oxygen...send the Hydrogen Along With Shiny New Hydrogen Pumps to the service stations that are already on every corner for the Shiny New Fuel Cell Cars that don't need overnight to charge. BTW send the Oxygen along with plenty of Masks to the EPA. They need the extra help.  

wind farms another failed idea. very high expense and high so called pollution to build and maintain them. without taxpayer money they would have never happened.  
HFC cars will need oil to make hydrogen at hydrogen plants then there is the problem in colder temps ice all over the roads from the exhaust.

Wind/Solar are a failed idea...just ask the rate payers where it has been implemented on an industrial scale. All I am saying is forcing unworthy/unproven technology ahead of it's time only hurts the people stuck with the bills in the failed aftermath. Nuclear has been around a long time and the VERY few "accidents" that happened were because of criminal levels of bad management like the disaster in Japan(horrible location). Nuclear technology needs to be revisited if we want to(or even need to) "get off fossil" !!
Force those damn wind turbines to work full time and let the "enviro" nut job proponents see the result when they all start burning up. The sooner that happens the more birds and bats we save.(the unintended consequence of blind stupidity)
BTW Elon Musk is avoiding one very inconvenient truth...The more cars he puts on the road...the longer it will take to get coal fired energy off the grid...all that extra power required won't come from thin air.
His cars DO Have Exhaust Pipes...they are 12 feet in diameter and 200 feet high... located at the nearest coal fired generating plant...denial of that along with all the subsidies is an integral part of Elon Musk's business plan...zero emissions is a fantasy pushed by those who like taxing CO2. The more E-Cars the more coal fired fossil taxes!!!
RE: water out the tail pipe...every gallon of gasoline burned produces about 1.5 times the amount of water out the tail pipe.

[Alberta Patriot]

Hyundai Fuel Cell SUV:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/hyundai-nexo-fuel-cell-electric-vehicle-photos-and-info-news

[¿spoom]

A far better idea is Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars. Make those Ugly Wind Farms Earn their  Government Subsidies and spin them 24/7/365 to split water into Hydrogen And Oxygen...send the Hydrogen Along With Shiny New Hydrogen Pumps to the service stations that are already on every corner for the Shiny New Fuel Cell Cars that don't need overnight to charge. BTW send the Oxygen along with plenty of Masks to the EPA. They need the extra help.  

wind farms another failed idea. very high expense and high so called pollution to build and maintain them. without taxpayer money they would have never happened.  
HFC cars will need oil to make hydrogen at hydrogen plants then there is the problem in colder temps ice all over the roads from the exhaust.

Wind/Solar are a failed idea...just ask the rate payers where it has been implemented on an industrial scale. All I am saying is forcing unworthy/unproven technology ahead of it's time only hurts the people stuck with the bills in the failed aftermath. Nuclear has been around a long time and the VERY few "accidents" that happened were because of criminal levels of bad management like the disaster in Japan(horrible location). Nuclear technology needs to be revisited if we want to(or even need to) "get off fossil" !!
Force those damn wind turbines to work full time and let the "enviro" nut job proponents see the result when they all start burning up. The sooner that happens the more birds and bats we save.(the unintended consequence of blind stupidity)
BTW Elon Musk is avoiding one very inconvenient truth...The more cars he puts on the road...the longer it will take to get coal fired energy off the grid...all that extra power required won't come from thin air.
His cars DO Have Exhaust Pipes...they are 12 feet in diameter and 200 feet high... located at the nearest coal fired generating plant...denial of that along with all the subsidies is an integral part of Elon Musk's business plan...zero emissions is a fantasy pushed by those who like taxing CO2. The more E-Cars the more coal fired fossil taxes!!!
RE: water out the tail pipe...every gallon of gasoline burned produces about 1.5 times the amount of water out the tail pipe.

Well said, I wish there WERE some better alternatives to the energy situation, especially alternatives to price supports that artificially support both producing and using electricity. If you or I killed eagles like the wind farms do, we'd spend the rest of our lives in a jail cell.

[¿spoom]

no wonder they are cutting 9% of their jobs

and yet Musk has promised to pay the entire cost for building an underground high speed system from downtown Chicago to it's O'Hare airport, in exchange for the proceeds of the finished system. I applaud the project as currently stated, yet chuckled that the owner of a highly subsidized car company that makes no profit has this kind of up front cash laying around. I realize that it makes "no money" because the income has been plowed back into research, but whether you spend it on research or candy it is still spent.

[¿spoom]

this time no accident, just sitting in traffic.   responses from tesla are insane. but all of our tax money given to tesla which allows them to build these jokes, causes stupid comments.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5852195/Actress-Mary-McCormack-claims-husbands-Tesla-Model-S-spontaneously-combusted.html

Had to chuckle at two of the story's comments; "Meh. A couple of one-percenters complaining that a car that only one-percenters can afford burst into flames. Should I feign concern?" and, "Tesla... insists its cars have 10x fewer fires than gas vehicles" And how many more gas vehicles are on the road compared to Teslas? Orders of magnitude.

[Wizzard]

no wonder they are cutting 9% of their jobs

and yet Musk has promised to pay the entire cost for building an underground high speed system from downtown Chicago to it's O'Hare airport, in exchange for the proceeds of the finished system. I applaud the project as currently stated, yet chuckled that the owner of a highly subsidized car company that makes no profit has this kind of up front cash laying around. I realize that it makes "no money" because the income has been plowed back into research, but whether you spend it on research or candy it is still spent.

Look it up,, Soros just gave him 45 million

[MAD6Gun]

 Speaking of wind farms. There is a fairly large wind farm on highway 30 at the Indiana/Ohio line that we paseed on our way home from inzane. Of all turbines in that farm. Less than a dozen were turning. What a waist of space......

[F6Dave]

Musk is interesting.  He has some great ideas and is an amazing self-promoter.  He also over-promises, and that is beginning to catch up with him.  The company has been around for 15 years and has yet to turn a profit.  It has about $10 BILLION in debt, and much of that comes due very soon.

The Model 3, their first high volume car, was supposed to finally make them profitable.  But they keep missing their production targets.  Apparently the assembly line is wrought with problems resulting in much higher defect rates than other manufacturers.  These have to be manually corrected, often by workers pulled from other jobs.  This wasn't a problem with previous, more expensive models that were largely hand built.

If they can't get a handle on mass production and build the Model 3 in volume, they could run out of cash and default on their massive debt.  One possible scenario I've read that makes sense would be for another large auto company to buy them.  The engineering, patents, and Tesla name would be valuable to the buyer, while Tesla would get the manufacturing technology it so badly needs.  It's going to be interesting to watch this play out.

[Serk]

The wind farms are ALL over West Texas, and the vast majority are turning.

I personally love wind, solar, nuclear, fossil fuels, whatever. I just wish they'd all compete on equal footing without any help or hindrance from Uncle Sugar...

As of October 2016 wind power is 12.63% of all electricity generated in The Republic of Texas... Not too shabby IMHO.

(See what is possible when the federal government gets outta the way? Texas is also the only state in the nation that operates it's power grid without the federal government meddling in it, which helped us expand wind power so quickly. Source - https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/How-Texas-blew-to-the-top-in-wind-power-12529917.php )

Also, the vast majority of the wind turbines here are the huge, slow moving ones, that decrease the impact to bats and birds...

[Oss]

I is confused

when I drove west thru the Columbia River to Portland from LOLO I passed thousands (yes I could not count them all- miles after miles - on both sides (wash & oregon) all turning nicely   How many turbines are failing nationwide?

When I drove east on 10 south of Joshua Tree area  all turning as well and man it was windy

Solar continues to come down in price and there are ways to store energy besides batteries, for instance as heat or by moving water or another substance against gravity so potential can be used when no sun is available.

From what I have read in popular mechanics and elsewhere Tide and current technology also has promise as the moon drives the tides for free.

As to Tesla, it makes as much sense to me as bitcoin, which is to say not at all.

[98valk]

inefficiencies of solar and wind.   proven science that oil is a renewable resource and the BTU content is the highest.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/11/04/why-are-solar-panels-so-inefficient/#ebad49e5948d

The second law of thermodynamics forbids a 100%-efficient solar cell. More specifically, Carnot's theorem applies to photovoltaics and any other solar energy system, where the hot side of the "heat engine" is the temperature of the sun and the cold side is the ambient temperature on earth. (This is slightly oversimplified.) The result is, for a system with sunlight concentration (lenses and mirrors and motors to follow the sun as it moves in the sky), the maximum efficiency is ~85%, and for a system that does not track the sun, the maximum efficiency is ~55%. (For details see my calculations here.)

On an overcast day, tracking the sun doesn't work, so ~55% is the theoretical maximum.

On the market today, the highest efficiency that money can buy is ... drumroll ... ~35% for unconcentrated photovoltaics (PV) (e.g. Spectrolab), ~35% for concentrated PV (e.g. Amonix), and ~35% for solar thermal (e.g. Ripasso).

By the way, in unconcentrated PV, there is currently a huge gap between the highest efficiency that money can buy (~35% from Spectrolab, for ~$100,000 per square meter) and the highest efficiency that is not insanely expensive (~20% silicon modules from SunPower SPWR +1%). I expect that gap to shrink dramatically in the next NXGPY +0% 10-20 years thanks to Alta Devices, which already has a pilot line creating affordable ~25%-efficient solar modules, and is moving towards 30% or even beyond. These cells will be light and flexible too! This is very exciting. But I'm getting off-topic. The question is not primarily about what's affordable, but what's possible. How to explain the gap between ~35% and the theoretical maximum?

For unconcentrated PV, the best cells (currently ~35%) have been creeping towards the theoretical maximum (~55%) for decades (see chart), and I expect they will continue to do so. I don't mean that they will literally asymptotically approach closer and closer to 55%; eventually there will be a tradeoff where higher nominal efficiency (under standard test conditions) comes at the expense of lower real-world efficiency (which involves working robustly under a variety of light and temperature conditions). So there is a ceiling for unconcentrated PV efficiency, and it's somewhere between ~35% and ~55%,

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bjorn-lomborg/are-wind-and-solar-energy_b_9087586.html

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/06/wind-energy-is-extraordinarily-expensive-and-inefficient/

https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/the-myth-of-wind-and-solar-energy-they-are-not-free/

The public is repeatedly told that wind and solar are “free” energy sources. Of course, this statement relates to costs once the plant is constructed and operating because, like hydropower, there is no ‘fuel cost’ with wind and solar power as there is with fossil fuel and nuclear generating technologies. But even that statement is a bit misleading, for intermittent technologies like wind and solar cannot be relied upon to produce power when needed, and must have other technologies to back them up. The cost of the back-up power, usually gas-fired or coal-fired generation, is not added to the cost of wind and solar power, so the public is less aware of the issues of using these intermittent technologies.

Currently, the existing fleet of fossil fuel generators is handling this problem. But as state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) increase over time, the problem will become more acute. Currently, 30 states and the District of Columbia have RPSs, which require the generation and/or sale of a specified amount of qualified renewable energy by certain set dates. These mandates were the major reason for the recent rapid escalation of solar and wind power, and, of course, other state and federal subsidies helped too. But, when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, coal and natural gas are used to provide the power that must be available on demand.

[Davemn]

Speaking of wind farms. There is a fairly large wind farm on highway 30 at the Indiana/Ohio line that we paseed on our way home from inzane. Of all turbines in that farm. Less than a dozen were turning. What a waist of space......

Sounds like you need some education on wind farms......
: A grid manager requests or directly controls a wind farm to feather its turbines as excess energy exists on the grid.
Modern turbines have sophisticated electronic controls and will "trip" off when any number of alarms are triggered, most commonly perhaps are faults related to the pitch system, circuit boards, or component temperatures. Modern turbines can also be remotely feathered or have auto-shut down features that prevent further damage when the gears are damaged, the lubricants leak, etc. Much older turbines, such as smaller ones with lattice towers that you might see along the freeway in Palm Springs, California, for example, may have some turbines which are left off for extended periods of time and are planned to be replaced with newer, more efficient turbines.

[Gavin_Sons]

Speaking of wind farms. There is a fairly large wind farm on highway 30 at the Indiana/Ohio line that we paseed on our way home from inzane. Of all turbines in that farm. Less than a dozen were turning. What a waist of space......

Sounds like you need some education on wind farms......
: A grid manager requests or directly controls a wind farm to feather its turbines as excess energy exists on the grid.
Modern turbines have sophisticated electronic controls and will "trip" off when any number of alarms are triggered, most commonly perhaps are faults related to the pitch system, circuit boards, or component temperatures. Modern turbines can also be remotely feathered or have auto-shut down features that prevent further damage when the gears are damaged, the lubricants leak, etc. Much older turbines, such as smaller ones with lattice towers that you might see along the freeway in Palm Springs, California, for example, may have some turbines which are left off for extended periods of time and are planned to be replaced with newer, more efficient turbines.

I feel so much more edgeamakated now.

[Oss]

But you don't have to secure against radiation leak with wind or solar

10000 yrs is on time to worry

[F6Dave]

The public is repeatedly told that wind and solar are “free” energy sources. Of course, this statement relates to costs once the plant is constructed and operating because, like hydropower, there is no ‘fuel cost’ with wind and solar power as there is with fossil fuel and nuclear generating technologies. But even that statement is a bit misleading, for intermittent technologies like wind and solar cannot be relied upon to produce power when needed, and must have other technologies to back them up. The cost of the back-up power, usually gas-fired or coal-fired generation, is not added to the cost of wind and solar power, so the public is less aware of the issues of using these intermittent technologies.

Currently, the existing fleet of fossil fuel generators is handling this problem. But as state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) increase over time, the problem will become more acute. Currently, 30 states and the District of Columbia have RPSs, which require the generation and/or sale of a specified amount of qualified renewable energy by certain set dates. These mandates were the major reason for the recent rapid escalation of solar and wind power, and, of course, other state and federal subsidies helped too. But, when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, coal and natural gas are used to provide the power that must be available on demand.

Backup generation isn't discussed very much.  Solar and wind are intermittent and require 100% backup from conventional generation for the times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.  As wind and solar grab a larger portion of the energy mix, those conventional plants become less profitable, and it also becomes more difficult to attract investors.  The result is much higher rates as the plants sit idle for more and more of the time.  It's also inefficient (wastes fuel) to start and stop the plants, not unlike our vehicles getting worse mileage in stop and go traffic.  This is a big part of the reason electric rates have increased so much in places with high RPSs, like California and Germany.

[98valk]

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2018/06/17/elon-musk-i-am-a-socialist/

Tesla CEO and PayPal billionaire Elon Musk surprised many Friday when he declared on Twitter that he is a socialist. Conservative critics, however, may well have agreed, given his companies’ reliance on the state.

Musk tweeted his declaration Friday after first tweeting that socialists have no sense of humor:

[F6Dave]

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2018/06/17/elon-musk-i-am-a-socialist/

Tesla CEO and PayPal billionaire Elon Musk surprised many Friday when he declared on Twitter that he is a socialist. Conservative critics, however, may well have agreed, given his companies’ reliance on the state.

Musk tweeted his declaration Friday after first tweeting that socialists have no sense of humor:

A socialist who builds cars for rich capitalists?