A government mandate is crushable—obsessed Model S owners are not. Other times the ambition will be fueled by a borderline-insane level of confidence and optimism that gives someone the gall to be idealistic. Then he surprised his viewers by purchasing a squashed BMW i8 off a Long Island yard for $28,000 and had it back on the road in three days with another $6600 in labor and parts. Some thoughts: – The most consistent fact I noticed about all countries is how much petroleum (i.e. But the Tesla tree is racing upwards, and its impending burst through the canopy has successfully scared the industry. Also in 1896, the first primitive motion picture went on display in New York, and the first wireless transmission of a human voice—the birth of the radio—went through in Brazil in 1900. So why not the modern electric car industry? Unlike car companies, the oil industry can’t suck it up, get on the EV train, and after an unpleasant hump, continue to thrive. 2) A glitch in the car market separates car company optimization from what’s best for the world. That one’s already decided. Let’s bring back Tesla’s Hershey’s Kiss business plan from earlier: So Step 3 is what this is all about. When compared to the Pre-Industrial average temperature, our current average temperature has risen by a little less than 1ºC. His mother, Lisa Jones, tells us: "He was always saying he could fix things. So what’s the deal with all of these other EVs? It costs a lot less to power an electric motor than a gas engine. Those measurements are still going on today. Stocks under 10 cents: Daily Price Predictions of Stocks with Smart Technical Market Analysis But below, the hungry underdog burns for sunlight and will spend 100 hours a week trying to figure out how to get it. 2) Spoiler: The post is very pro-Tesla. It’s not clear if any or all of these companies will get into Quadrant 4, but if they do…, If there are high-quality, affordable EVs for sale that also have a high range…. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. With the new ability to transport many more goods and materials, much farther away, much more quickly, and to far more efficient factories, the Industrial Revolution ignited in full force. Second, in order to be profitable, you have to sell at a high volume. And those joules have gone a long way—you can thank them for the comforts and quality of your life today. Natural selection doesn’t make things “better”—it just optimizes biology to best survive in whatever environmental circumstances it finds itself. But by dying in a swamp and sinking to the bottom, Carboniferous organisms often ended up being quickly covered by sand and clay and were able to make it underground with their joules still intact. Steam-centered external combustion was the older and best-understood technology of the three and was initially the most common way to power a car. We’re in one of those little interglacial periods right now.↩, On hour three of the “how a car engine works” rabbit hole, I finally had to acknowledge that I was going to die at some point in the future and stopped myself.↩, This is a whole, long, complicated story. We crawled into an abandoned school bus, trespassed through dilapidated hallways, dodged fleeting thunderstorms, and wandered the empty streets of Chinatown late into the evening. When the Industrial Revolution got going, the British started digging—they were gonna need a lot of coal. This would cost $60-80, or as much as an expensive tank of gas—so Tesla drivers would now have the option of “fast or free.”. Shades of Green: Electric Cars’ Carbon Emissions Around the Globe From spy shots to new releases to auto show coverage, Car and Driver brings you the latest in car news. Free shipping. Today, Ford, Chevy, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Fiat, Kia, Mitsubishi, and Smart all have an EV on the road. Quick aside: Tim Makes Passionate Car People Even More Furious By Describing How a Car Engine Works in a Clearly-Non-Car-Person Way Blue Box. Let’s bring back our US emissions chart to see what Greg means: Earlier in the post, we identified the two biggest causes of CO2 emissions: cars running on gas and coal making electricity. Consumer Reports: Tesla Model S – The electric car that shatters every myth Andrew Pollack: “General Motors Sues California Over Quota for Electric Car Sales.” The New York Times, 2001 And without any threat from below on the forest floor—from the wild innovation of scrappy entrepreneurs with nothing to lose—the car industry has had the luxury of calmly sunbathing in a tight canopy quilt, making only incremental advances, only when they’re needed. This snapping releases chemical energy, which knocks into other nearby oxygen molecules, causing them to get going fast—and if they get going fast enough, they’ll snap together with another of the log’s carbon molecules, which releases more chemical energy. These are the yearnings of the hungry underdog. By clearing out fog all the way to the bottom, I build a tree trunk in my head, and from then on, all new information can hold on, which makes that topic forever more interesting and productive to learn about. Doesn’t solve the pricing problem. "It's just something that I find absolutely hilarious," he cracks. So for this to be a good idea, you not only have to create an awesome car, but one that a ton of people will want to buy. It was 1900 and electricity was at the core of all the coolest, newest technology. the 2014 Toyota Camry, the 2015 Toyota Camry, etc. In 1912, engineer Charles Kettering invented the electric car starter, eliminating the need to laboriously and dangerously hand crank your gas car on, and the newly invented muffler significantly reduced gas engine noise. Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth so the sun’s energy easily escapes, while Venus’s atmosphere is much thicker, with 300 times the CO2 as Earth, so it traps in a ton of heat. Part 3: How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars, Part 1: Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man This is Part 2 of a four-part series on Elon Musk’s companies. One of the two common types of electric motor is the AC induction motor (that’s what Tesla cars use). And throughout the 19th century, coal mines and oil rigs popped up everywhere. Some examples of myths I’ve seen floating around about EVs or Tesla in particular: Actually: A) Lithium-ion cells used in cars aren’t especially hazardous and are classified as landfill safe, B) They’re almost all recycled anyway, and C) They’ll continue to be recycled, because a used car battery still has a lot of value, either as a stationary battery or in the raw materials themselves. They want to see it work somewhere else before they will approve the project and move forward.”36. Right around the time this was happening, another revolution was underway. Other car companies still aren’t convinced. Regulation: Another democratic government muscle is its ability to make rules—laws, restrictions, quotas, etc. The super-clever way they create confusion is by generating the public perception that there’s a genuine debate among scientists. Compare that to the whole picture of over 80 million cars sold worldwide annually and over a billion total cars on the road. . Taking the US as an example, here’s why they’re wrong: 1) US electricity production is mixed, not just coal. The reason for this is simple—CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The US isn’t as dependent. So a new and disruptive technology is often met with hostility as it emerges, as the existing canopy does whatever it can to squash the potential disruptor out of existence before it can gain momentum and start to spread. 1 kWh = 1,000 joules/second over an entire hour = 3,600,000 joules.↩, At the time, they didn’t own the rights to the name yet—some guy in Sacramento did.↩, They were both so sad about this that they still aren’t on speaking terms today.↩, Musk’s thoughts on the role of CEO: “The CEO receives the distillation of all the worst problems in the company, only spending time on the things that are going wrong, and you get all the stuff other people can’t take care of, so you have a filter for the crappiest problems in the company.”↩, I’m sick of writing von Holzhausen with the little v and the upsetting spelling and I wish he had a different name.↩, In the almost-an-EV world of plug-in hybrids, the Chevy Volt ($35,000, 38 mile range before gas kicks in) and the Toyota Prius Plug-In ($31,000, 11 mi range before gas) are the clear leaders.↩, No one in the world sounds less fun to hang out with than a group of concerned scientists.↩, This Nissan commercial does a good job of hammering home the message.↩, You can watch Musk explain everything about the Powerwall here.↩, Musk has a bet going with someone that that will happen by 2027.↩, Gray square footnotes are as boring as you’d think a gray square footnote would be. "No one knew I'm Black," says Benoit, who used an avatar of a grizzled and cautious-smiling white man—the guy from a meme called Hide the Pain Harold. One big problem they had was that this was a new technology, and the R&D costs early on for a new technology drive up the price of the product—that’s the same reason the very first cell phones and computers started out really expensive. Then Hrencecin came by with that unforgettable Model S. Before he knew it, Benoit was bidding on a flood-damaged, fish-laden Model S shell he would name Dolores. Their end goal, and the company’s official mission, was “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.” In other words, EVs are gonna happen, but we’re gonna make them happen a lot sooner. This kind of negative externality is how tobacco companies got away with murder for so many decades. The US is the world’s second biggest carbon emissions culprit (China is first with 50% more than the US) and the world leader in transportation emissions—so if we can figure out what the US needs to fix, that’s a good start. Tesla Blog: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Car Without this feedback loop, the temperature increases resulting from CO2 emissions would be 2-3 times smaller. "It was probably the dumbest, best decision I ever made," he says. Humanely accomplice the pot without help from some other individual, then adding steam chamber oil to oil up all parts, interface φ4mm copper pipe, pressure between 2-4, open the steam valve. Or will I end up stranded? There's nothing in the script that says he couldn't go bigger. The nature and power of a market’s government-god varies significantly throughout the world. Tesla’s $226 million IPO in June of 2010 marks the first IPO for an American car company since Ford went public in 1956. Before that, a customer had towed a salvaged Tesla there from Mexico. He explained how precise everything about car design is and how “a difference of a quarter millimeter can spread itself across the entire car.”, I asked him what it was like to come to Tesla after having spent years at more established car companies. The Original Smoke buddy Smoke Buddy Personal Air Filter ( COLOR MAY VARY ) $10.00 ... TESLA NEMA Charger Adapter 5-15/20 6-15/20/50 10-50 14-30 14-50 Genuine OEM . Mindlessly, at full speed. So that’s why Musk told Christie Nicholson that he thinks a lot about electric cars. – Biomass use is pretty substantial, and almost all of it comes from developing countries, many of them in Africa. Are they dead? A deeply-set, stagnant industry is like a country led by a deeply-entrenched dynasty—it’s hard to penetrate the status quo. There are the racist comments, of course. Digging into another part of the story brought me to the end of World War I. people will be jealous that their neighbor has a more futuristic car and doesn’t have to get gas, will ask questions, and then might get one themselves. Bringing back what Musk said about Ford—He was the kind of guy that when something was in the way, he found a way around it, he just got it done. There are now a bunch of myths floating around. Something really, terribly bad might be happening that could make our actual lives legitimately worse in the future, but we have a prisoner’s dilemma on our hands—it’s much, much better for all of us collectively to make a change, but for each individual CEO, lobbyist, or politician, there’s more to personally gain from maintaining the status quo. It all makes for primo YouTube content and a devoted, if eccentric, demographic of mostly white, mostly male viewers. So the reason why, 112 years after Ford Motor Company’s founding, we’re still using harmful, old-fashioned engines is simple: none of the pressures on the car industry are pushing it to change. That’s the thing about dogs—if given something delicious, they tend to eat until the food runs out or they get sick, whichever comes first, and there aren’t too many other factors in play. But when that effort netted only $13,000, Benoit invested his six-figure YouTube profits to launch the business. Tesla’s plan all along was to plant a stellar car right in that Quadrant 4 box, and that’s what they say they’re going to do in 2017 when the Model 3 comes out. This statement highlights the fact that we’re very much in what will be known as the Fossil Fuel Era of human history. So they stopped. But Ford was a masterful industrialist, and by coming up with the concept of making cars by moving assembly line instead of hand-crafting them, he dramatically brought down costs and created America’s first car for the masses. Of course, America is in a big fight about this, with fiscal liberals typically feeling a lot more optimistic about government’s ability to play a positive role in moving things forward than fiscal conservatives. Just get it done. And giant industries don’t just roll over and eat razor blades without a serious fight. And four years later, they had their Step 1 car, the Roadster:31. When humans discovered all of this underground kidnapped carbon, you have to remember that for them, the carbon wasn’t the point. Likewise, significant US military funding is something the American electorate can agree on enough that it receives tremendous funding and plays an important part in advancing technology in a number of industries. "I mean, if I can make some of my money back later, that'd be cool," he says. We need to learn to make energy the adult way—sustainably. Has the original "big valve" Twin Cam engine. 1 watt = 1 joule/second. Even if Tesla ditches the high-tech aluminum body, makes the car smaller, and ditches some of the fanciest things about the Model S, the battery pack alone makes a price like $35,000 impossible. How Tesla is solving the high-price problem: Big problems call for big solutions. While the sun’s joules can provide any animal with heat and light, the joules that power all of us from the inside enter the biosphere in the first place when the sun gives them to plants. But it’s no surprise that the quickest up-and-comer type of car was the electric car. Went From a Napkin Drawing to the TV, Meet Trail Mater, Rory Irish's 1982 Chevrolet K30, The $727,080 Answer to a Question of Luxury, Every New Compact Car You Can Buy in 2021, Resolving to Chase a Lightning Lap of My Own, How Earnhardt Could Have Survived Daytona 500. One of the perks of partnering with the Electrified Garage is being able to roll Dolores onto the lift for a checkup. In a perfect, fair, open market, greed works great as the core lifeblood motivation. The Leaf costs about $30,000 ($22,500 after tax credit) and has a range of 84 miles. That’s (a dramatic oversimplification of) how a steam engine works. I think the ideal mix is a two-part cocktail: First ingredient: Greed. So we’re currently in this not-that-big window we probably should try to stay in: This is also even more fragile than is intuitive. Biological horses got super upset if you tried to power them by fire, so again, humanity got innovating, and a couple decades later, there were big, metal horses everywhere with engine cylinders full of fire. But I think both would agree that major tech progress being forced forward by the government is more the way of places like the Soviet Union and modern-day China where government has a lot more power. About the Leaf, he said, “The range is too low, but if they keep iterating on that, they’ll eventually get there.” On the i3: “They’re trying to do something there. The tactic to stay alive longer is always the same—put out misinformation to create confusion, and make it political so half the country feels like they’re going against “their own team” if they side against the industry. Car companies aren’t supposed to start in Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley startups aren’t supposed to make cars. First, you don’t need the average temperature to go up by a catastrophic amount to have a catastrophe—because the average temp could go up by only 3ºC but the max temp rises by a lot more. There tend to be three age-old concerns about the viability of the electric car: EV Concern 1) Range. “General Motors Sues California Over Quota for Electric Car Sales. Benoit started posting videos to YouTube only after running out of storage space on his phone. Musk and von Holzhausen’s22 team had spent all this time perfecting the design of the car before it was time to put the door handles on, and they got really used to it that way. I provided positive value and my business’s success went up with it. We won’t get into Problem 1 today—but both Musk, through the US-leading solar panel installation company he co-founded, SolarCity, and Tesla, with their new product, the Powerwall stationary battery,26 are leading the way in this half of the energy equation too. It’s much less fun to use a bunch of joules running fast or lifting something heavy than it is to just sit on a log pleasantly and hold onto those joules instead.