Posted on 12/14/2013 3:59:04 PM PST by chiller
Engineering breakthroughs like the Tesla Model S may be burning up the electric car market (figuratively and literally), but they’re leaving drivers cold and under-powered in the face of Old Man Winter.
Cold temperatures have adverse effects on batteries, slowing down the incoming and outgoing flow of energy and inevitably losing some in the process. The 250-mile average range of an electric car in normal climate conditions can see its performance reduced by 70-miles on a single charge in average winter conditions. The colder it gets, the shorter than range.
Not only that, the average winter driver tends to turn up the heat — a function that also puts a draw on the battery uncommon during other seasons.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
One issue with that is that it takes a long time to get the permits and planning done to expand the power grid as would be needed for a significant fraction of the US vehicle population to convert. As it is right now, 1) almost nobody is interested in doing so, not least of which because of the envirowackos and 2) just 5% of the US vehicle population converting will crash grids.
The only exception is Texas, which took a winter rolling blackout that happened a few years ago *extremely* seriously and is now frantically expanding our grid.
Tesla Model S cars also seem to be predisposed to going on fire if they run over road debris. Three of them in the last couple of months - seems the battery compartment under the car is not properly armored, and it is the lowest part of the car.
I would suggest a more practical model - see Nissan Leaf.
Assuming the station had run its batteries down, ‘a couple hours’ isn’t going to do you much good. That’s 1/8th of a charge at best, IIRC. And remember, with batteries the miles per percentage is worse the more the battery runs down.
Yes. It’s pretty hard to beat the energy density of gasoline, which, by the way, is the second cheapest liquid one can buy...
I soooo want to move away from the grasshoppers in California and to the ants in Texas!
You can exterminate an anthill, but not a grasshopperhill.
Fisker. Thankyouthankyou
And Aesop never met the predatory urban grasshoppers...
As the name describes, resistance heating is caused in the material by resistance to the flow of electrons. A manifestation of electrical resistance is heat. The more resistance of the conductor, the hotter it will become, and current draw from the power source is increased.
If your source is a battery, and there is no way to recharge it during this excessive current draw, the battery will be discharged in short order. Your Tesla is now a $165,000 paperweight.
>> “OK, but that’s little different than restoring power on a hot summer’s day in the south. If they tried to do it everywhere at once the strain of all those air conditioners kicking on at the same time will pop breakers” <<
Yes.
I recently bought an AC unit that only runs the fan for the first 5 minutes. I hate it, its stupid in my opinion, since if all of them did it it still wouldn’t help, it would just delay the impact point.
IF you assume power delivery doesn’t expand to fill the need.
Of course if that were the case there wouldn’t be enough power to run air conditioning in the first place...
>> “To make the argument that electric cars will inevitably cause problems that will keep the grid down is to assume that the power companies won’t change anything in response to an on going and predictable increase in baseline demand.” <<
.
The logical approach to that issue would be to tax the purchase of electric cars to fund the expansion costs attributable to their operation.
That would at least be an incentive for the power companies that wouldn’t burden the more sensible people with the bill for satisfying the fools.
CA is not expanding their grid much and there *isn’t* enough power there for air conditioning *already*. See the rolling blackouts and brownouts endemic in CA.
“...The Pope is Catholic....”
Not sure about this pope.
Electric companies are already starting to say that they will charge extra fees and higher rates to those charging electric vehicles at their homes.
>> “Remember the Carter years? Some gas stations would run dry and then couldn’t be resupplied because stalled cars were blocking tanker truck access!” <<
.
100% myth!
The stations were not running dry in the Carter scam; they were just having their hours of operation controlled by county ‘Emergency Services’ directors.
There was no shortage of light oil at the Shell and Union refineries; they were actually running out of storage space and hiding much of it in rail cars. Thank God there weren’t any derailments!
Your first thought is to outlaw progress.
Your second is to tax it.
Yet you assert that you are not a big government liberal.
I sooo want to move to Texas...
exactly
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