Unlike Slashdot commenters, most Americans live in multiple-car households. If your regular driving is less than the range you're set, because you use the family gas hog for those occasional journeys, or Zipcar.
From the surprisingly favorable Top Gear review, "BMW reckons nearly all i3 buyers will use it as a second car so won't be doing long journeys, and it's optimised to make them efficient and fun."
The Tesla Roadster was the first and for a while the cheapest car to use all CFRP body panels, but Tesla's site talks of its "monocoque chassis, constructed of resin-bonded and riveted extruded aluminum."
From TFA the i3 is "the first mass-produced auto with a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic passenger cell mounted onto an aluminum chassis"
So you're both correct.
You don't dispose of lithium-ion, you recycle it. CFRP (Carbon fiber reinforced plastic) isn't recycled much, though there are initial plants that can recycle the fibers into a lesser grade.
But you're focusing on the wrong thing. A 1.5 ton 35mpg car is going to burn through 10 tons of gasoline over 120,000 miles, and that gasoline is very polluting to produce, spill, refine, and deliver before it all goes up in smoke. All reputable studies find that 75-90% of the pollution from a car comes from operating it, not manufacturing it.
As to whether you should ditch your 39 mpg car for an i3, so long as you sell it to someone who junks their gas guzzler then it's a win for the environment. The average fuel efficiency of the automotive fleet goes up.
Sure, everyone thinks they know what that better language is. There is no consensus, there never will be, and other browser makers will resist attempts like Dart and NaCl and pNaCl by one vendor to impose a new language or runtime. So realistically, how will it occur? Every web site has been free to send <script type="text/python" src="foo.py"> or <script type="bin/mybytecode_x64" src="foo.llvm"> pages for close to 15 years now, but no one does because it's a complete non-starter to require end-users to install a special browser or hack in support for a new language module.
Meanwhile in the real world JavaScript (+ HTML + CSS + Canvas + SVG + WebGL + audio processing + sensor support + notifications + real-time communications +
No, let's keep advancing JavaScript.
Let's compare
* find web site promoting some application
* go to download link
* find it's not available for Mac/Linux/your phone/Windows XP
* or it is, but you need to download a different Qt/GTK/SDL/DotNet/JDK runtime
* but that's not available for your machine, or it's 32-bit not 64-bit
* now download, save, run installer, wait for virus checker
* now finally run the bloody thing
* (Windows-only) wonder why there's another task running, it's the %^$#! Check for updates service
* A week later. Yay, there's an update. Repeat all these steps.
vs.
* find web site promoting some application
* click link
* you're running today's build. It just works.
You have to be a clueless, blind, future-fearing Luddite, yet simultaneously have the skills to master the download-find-install-run-maintain loop to find the former preferable. The 0.1% of the world population who fit that niche all hang out on Slashdot and vote up "bloated browser" comments.
So, the green heads are as much at fault for the climate change problems as anyone.
Comic facepalm.
Meanwhile a Mercedes E-Class (is everyone driving that a "limousine whatever" too?) is a lot slower and at around 25 mpg will consume 15 tons of gasoline over 120,000 miles.
That argument might resonate with Mercedes buyers who tend to be wealthier and therefore would care more about the environment because they're in a position to afford luxury goods. However, the Mercedes E class is also offered in a hybrid configuration for those buyers who are concerned about their carbon footprint...
Before arguing fatuous points, go visit fueleconomy.gov. 2013 Mercedes-Benz E400 Hybrid gets 26 mpg. Still 15 tons of gasoline.
... or being seen as "green" in a chic sort of way.
More snide comments about other drivers. What happened to you?
Bringing up financing just introduces more flaws in BP's model.
Leasing an EV is a good idea, if you have a regular 40 mile commute get a Volt or Leaf right now and you may save money. But Better Place didn't lease you "your" battery, because it regularly gets swapped for something else. They sold you electric miles (Shai Agassi made it sound like he was freeing you from that expensive battery pack, you'd just pay to drive around cheaply on electricity). But that means buying a car becomes a messy three-way between you, the car manufacturer, and the "provider of a charged battery". And since most people can (and want to) recharge at home for most of their driving, BP had to stop you from plugging into a wall outlet for cheap kWh in order to make their finances work. Others here allege they used a unique connector, my understanding is they would meter your home EV charging station separately, and you could only recharge at Better Place's public stations. It was a complete mess. The genuine benefit of a quick swap during a long trip costs big money to deliver, and BP's model could only do it by making all your regular recharge and driving much more expensive, eliminating the "cheap running costs" benefit of EVs. A few hundred people in Israel found the tradeoff worthwhile, but it was always going to be a tough sell.
Capable? Yes, it could probably be done. Will it be done? No. Elon is a smart man and he knows how to say the right things to the right audience to get what he wants.
More importantly, he's selling his second-generation made-in-USA car to thousands of buyers, and winning awards.
However, as a practical matter the Model S already has difficulty competing with fossil fuel powered vehicles on range and even then only by making the batteries fully integrated components molded into every bit of spare room in the vehicle frame.
The Model S chassis is a thing of beauty. A compact high-power motor and reduction gearing, and a flat battery pack fills the frame because there's nothing else down there. No muffler, catalytic converter, oil pan, etc. Why not use the lot for batteries instead of taking away trunk space?
In fact it's more like an alternative to the S class Mercedes for limousine liberals...
Don't oversell your straw man. The $95,000 S Class is more expensive and quite a bit more luxurious.
... who want to appear green using our green (aka money). Tell me again why my tax dollars should be subsidizing Musk and Tesla?
Tesla just repaid its $465M loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program set up under the G.W. Bush administration; Ford and Nissan received billions under the same program. If you're referring to the $7500 tax credit, it lets buyers keep more of their money for the worthwhile goal of "ending America's addiction to foreign oil", as every Republican president since Nixon has intoned. Tell me again why my tax dollars should be subsidizing your home mortgage, or any other tax rebate?
Your sneering tone about "appearing green" ignores the genuine increase in efficiency from an electric drive. No doubt you'll bleat about coal powered cars, ignoring the increasing role of cleaner natural gas in USA's electricity generating mix, and that many buyers will install solar PV to reduce their carbon footprint further. Meanwhile a Mercedes E-Class (is everyone driving that a "limousine whatever" too?) is a lot slower and at around 25 mpg will consume 15 tons of gasoline over 120,000 miles. Plug in cars are definitely better for the environment.
EV batteries are big, but adding swap capability only adds minor additional space.. The Model S pack is swappable. The problem is standardization. Better Place burned through all that money for only one battery design that only one car adopted, and even then the Renault Fluence had to have its trunk extended to make the Z.E. version fit BP's QuickDrop pack. BP hoped that customers would demand swap capability so other car companies would adopt it, but it didn't happen, and car manufactures have instead adopted many different chemistries, layouts, placement within the car, air vs. water cooling...
EV batteries are built up from multiple slabs or sheets. Already if your battery breaks, you only replace the defective module. You could imagine swapping the individual modules for charged ones, but each still weighs around 40 pounds and has be reattached to high-voltage high-current wiring and the cooling system. It's an order of magnitude harder than prying out 8 D cells from your boombox, and again there's no "D cell" standard for EVs.
Maybe there could be a standard for a battery extender, a cage in the trunk where you can add several of these modules to your city EV for a long trip. That avoids the problem of swapping your $12,000 pristine battery for a clapped-out beater. But all the cost-time-weight-safety-standardization tradeoffs work against it. Skip the hassle and rent a long-range car for those trips, or use the other car that's already in the garage of most American households.
Since Elon has said that the Model S ( and presumably the Model X) is capable of conversion to battery swap
It's not automated, but yes, jack the car up at a dealer, detach the battery pack, attach a charged one. Tesla Motors has been vague on the details. Since owners own the car and its expensive warrantied battery pack, most likely a dealer will give you a loaner battery as a courtesy for a long trip, and you'll later return to pick up your original. Obsessive fans at Tesla Motors Club debate more elaborate swapping networks but as yet there's no evidence that Tesla will go for it. Musk has shown he'll do whatever it takes for his EVs to compete, but it seems Tesla is busy building out the Supercharger Network (relatively fast DC quick charge stations spread along major routes, unless you're a dumbass New York Times reporter).
perhaps Tesla will try to get the Better Place switch station tech - despite the company's failure, they did have solid working tech as Tesla could benefit tremendously by not having to reinvent, er, the wheel.
BP's intellectual property includes their outdated battery pack design (Tesla's flat sheet is better), the QuickDrop technology for attaching the battery (Tesla's is better), and automating the battery swap with robots. The last seems only worth a few million, unless evil patents are involved.
Batteries are the way you get a decent boost to the efficiency of burning anything in an inefficient combusion engine, viz hybrid powertrains. Keep dreaming that ethanol from anything will become so cheap that you don't care about efficiency. Meanwhile plugging in is the cheapest, most efficient, and least-polluting way to make a car go the first XX miles right now.
I'm not against ethanol from biomass, though it's a far less efficient way to get energy from an area than covering it with solar panels, and the processes all require substantial energy inputs. If and when ethanol from anything is cost-effective it'll serve as a fine fuel for the range-extender engines of plug-in cars that mostly run off their batteries.
Nobody is making a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine. BMW only made 100 7-series hydrogen models in 2006, and the Mazda hydrogen Wankel (2008) was never produced in quantity. It's tough to store a lot of it hydrogen a car, so you need a more efficient powerplant than blowing up a fuel to make heat and a little forward motion. That powerplant is a fuel cell, essentially reversing electrolysis to drive an electric motor. Fuel cell vehicles are out there, Honda has leased a few dozen FCX Claritys in Southern California, the only place in the USA with a handful of public H2 refueling stations.
The latest optimistic date for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to be finally really genuinely truly here is 2015, and Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz and maybe Toyota are most serious about offering models. But the relative success of the Volt and the Ford and Toyota plug-in vehicles shows far more people are happy to plug in at home for their regular commute and use a conventional gas engine as an occasional range extender. "Early adopters ready to spend big money" will mostly buy Teslas with huge battery packs that can recharge (slowly) anywhere. The market of rich environmentalists who don't have access to a plug and live near the handful of H2 refueling stations and who regularly drive long distances is TINY, and will remain so until fossil fuel becomes vastly more expensive.
Mod AC parent up! Here it is again
"At least some at Google [cnet.com] want to embrace a Mozilla-backed project to speed up Web apps written with JavaScript -- even though it competes directly with Google's own Native Client and Dart programming technology. "
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation?
