I'm well aware of all this, and it's why I don't full-cycle my off grid house batteries (off grid since '79 except for phone/inet). As luck would have it, by the time the Volt's warranty runs out, I'll be 68...and might not care. Till then, new batteries are free to me.

The losers are the ones who locked in losses at the bottom - changing a risk into a sure-thing loss. If you had the right stocks, you're up now, actually. If you had a really good money manager (I do this for myself) you sold near the top and bought back in - much more shares - near the bottom, and are WAY ahead. I pulled off a couple "5 baggers" myself. Go check BTE for example.
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Some things are less risky if you're competent. A lot more people think they are, than actually are, of course.

Full cycling of ANY battery kills it quick - not sure what Tesla does with theirs but they'd have the exact same set of issues. FWIW, A123 batteries more or less went out of business due to quality control issues and Fiskar's failure. No, what happens with the Volt is that you wind up putting in a little more to get the 10.5kwh out again. That's all. Eventually, it'll not have the 10.5 left over. Some Li winds up lost to the process, so even that first isn't anywhere close to as bad as lead-acid - and I know - I run solar and have since 1979. I'd KILL to have a battery as good as the Volt one for my home (actually, 2-3 would be nice). Too bad that though GM only charges you $3k for one - you have to turn one in to get that deal. They're keeping mum on what they actually cost.

Yes, the Volt uses much larger cells. It has strings of 96 in series (about 360v) and three strings like that in parallel. There are ~~ 120 small embedded processors controlling the thing. There's a cooling fin (and a whole battery cooling loop that's separate from the rest of the car) for each set of 3 cells, resistors that can be switched in and out to balance the charge among each cell in the three strings, a bunch of fancy stuff in that box - along with relays that shut it off to the outside world the instant anything trips the alarm; the relays run from the 12v system the Volt also has (with a 175 amp switcher off the big guys to keep that charged) because it cost less in $ and weight to use standard 12v accessories for - power steering - hydraulic brakes (yup, it has a pump) heat, A/C, and anything else that would normally be dependent on shaft power, because tthe engine doesn't run often (I'm showing 209 mpg on my 2012 so far, and the electricity is ALL coming from my solar system).
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Yes, the Volt has a dinkier battery capacity than the Tesla. For one thing, for longevity, they only let you use 10.5kwh out of a nominal 16 kwh. That's why they think they can afford an 8 year/100k mile type warranty on it. But duh, you can make it bigger, use more than one, and so on. The Tesla actually gets more miles/kWh than the Volt unless you're racing, as well - the Volt is a heavy, solid car, not the latest greatest no money spared lightest car you can make, like the Tesla is.
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(Yes, I'm a very serious electronic engineer {Hence the Volt}...but one who will never buy a car I can't just buy the one I just test drove. When Teslas hit the real street and I can just write a check and drive away - one of them is going to be mine - too much danger putting down that much money and hoping to get one of the "good ones" rather than the "hangover monday" cars - and the wait is excruciating).

Just use the design for the Chevy Volt. Had mine two years, beat the snot out of it - and it's as good as new, or actually, slightly better in range. GM has that all worked out re temp/charge/balancing control - and as a result, both would get cheaper due to volume. And yes, I'm about to test-drive a Tesla, since my solar system has the extra juice to handle both.

Have to agree mcvos. What most people don't realize is that the smart folks on G+ rarely appear in public - they mostly hangout in private, rarely post to "the stream", and mainly use the free video conference service. For example, as a retired consultant, I often mentor people there - and I don't bother with the usual drunken reprobates in most public hangouts. Most of us don't even read our "feeds" at all. That's not how "you hold it right". Once you have a few quality people as contacts, and do a little sharing with them - and their quality contacts, G+ becomes this vast network of networks (sound familiar?) that is in fact not trying to be as public and "likey" as possible, like FB, but actually a bit exclusionary. Any other old fart ought to "get it". Far higher quality exists there - admittedly in less quantity than FB. What did you expect? The distribution of the real winners in the world looks like that too.

Most of the lead in lead-acid batteries is in a compound - lead oxide or lead sulfate, and in most modern lead-acid batteries, the lead grid is really a lead-calcium alloy. All of the above are quite nasty. We don't deal with that at all. Just melting lead (or one of the popular alloys used in bullets) presents little to no risk from fumes - we don't heat it red hot, just melt it to cast or swage new bullets. In reloading, you're much more likely (ask Richard Lee) to be poisoned by cleaning the brass, which has lead compounds *from the primers* and can dust into the air from a vibratory tumbler, and therefore get inside you if you breathe that. So don't breathe that. No, OSHA doesn't come into play here. There's simply no reason to. My biggest actual hassle in lead reclamation is that for example, a very different alloy is used in jacketed bullets (often pure, soft lead) and hard-cast pistol bullets - can be almost any alloy of lead, tin, antimony, silver - and a few other traces. If I want a uniform hardness alloy, I kind of have to do some extra work to either separate things out, or melt it all together, measure the hardness of the result, and then perhaps add some of this or that to get to the desired number. In no case do we bother to try and "refine" or take something out of what's there - it's too hard and too expensive. Nor do we fool with "extracting" lead from batteries and such other smelting type operations that really are quite dangerous. There's no need. The customers at the range bring us lead in metallic form already. No smelting required. Note that lead-calcium is very nasty stuff when overheated, and can make some very poisonous gasses if you do - don't mess with old batteries, recycle them the normal way. Note, many lead bullet casters use old wheel balancing weights for a source of metal. Many of the newer ones contain zinc, which is it's own world, and that particular alloy is almost impossible to cast with any precision - even a few ppm of zinc ruins the metal for bullets. Protip - avoid wheelweights that are still shiny - those are the ones with the zinc in them. The old style is a pretty decent alloy, which can be hardened and made even better with a little addition of tin and/or antimony. But drop just one or two zinc types into a 100 lb melt, and it's ruined for bullet casting. It's very hard to get rid of, and dangerous, as the only way is to bubble air through red hot melt....you can imagine the fumes and the risks there.

I own a small range, and that's precisely what we do - we gather the shot bullets and remelt them for casting (helps if you designed the backstops to make that easier). Saves a ton of money. Ditto, we collect all the brass from dumb shooters who leave it there - even more savings. The green aspect rides along for free - we just want our expensive metals back, it's like a super high grade mine with a heck of a lot less mess made to the envirornment in the process - at very low cost to us. I see a comment about Barnes below - no, we get them too. They float on the melt (along with the cupro-nickel normal jackets), and we sell the copper back to the refiners.

Are all wrong. What a convienient excuse for the liars in government to put out ridiculous wrong numbers. "Who could have known?" There's no inflation right? Unemployment (if you count part time jobs designed to elminate need for obamacare)...and so on. This seems in the examples to likely print lower numbers...How handy for the liars to have an excuse for it.

No, that started with the Chevy Volt, at least in my 2012 which of course I got in 2010 - you're late! It has several machines running linux, including the infotainment.

The three round burst limit has two reasons - the one you mention, and the other is that even as a "pop gun" it's very hard to stay on target full auto with a light M4-class .223. No point shooting at the sky, for anyone. I know, I'm a gunsmith, I have a few really nice toys and have used them on ranges. Even great single shot "rapid fire competition" guys can't handle a full auto for crap. Which is also another reason they stopped the '14 from being full auto - too many bullets went "no where useful" - those things really do have a kick.

I DO have mod points today, but all the good posts are already at +5, or nearly.

Dunno - in a world of rigged markets- designed to destroy savers and small investors, one might be wise to convert mere inflatable fiat money into harder assets, like the ability to continue to afford transport no matter what oil - or electricity - prices do. In my own case, my Volt is charged from my solar array - I'm off-grid. When not charging my car (most of the time) the extra solar power I bought to handle the car is used for other luxuries...so you can't charge all the cost of the solar system to the car alone.
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I also find it interesting to know that Bob Lutz is an AGW denier, yet as a "car guy" really got behind this one and almost forced GM to get in the game. He's pretty impressed with Musk in this Charlie Rose interview - and so am I. This *was* the link which no longer works, at least if you have adblock, perhaps: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11984
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But I'm also the type of car buyer that no-way will set down a significant chunk of cash and then hope the company makes the car I ordered the right way, and without going out of business, and by the time I need it. That's Tesla's weak point right now, everything else looks peachy. Yeah, they're expensive. Find another car as nice that isn't - as Elon himself said, I realize there's no shortage of exotic-expensive cars for rich guys, that's not the point - the point is, he has to sell those first expensive ones to make enough money to stay in business so as to make the ones we normal people can afford - looks like a good plan so far.
It's just that I, like many, know that there are actual and not always subtle differences between say, cars, or guitars - play or drive 3-4 supposedly identical ones if you don't believe that - and so I don't tend to order stuff like that - I gotta touch it first, the one I'm going to get.

You left out a few obvious and large places the money goes. Banks - every person in that chain borrowed money, and has to pay interest. Taxes - mostly dead weight. If you never borrow a dime yourself, an astonishing percentage of all money you spend pays some interest to some bankers. Period. You can't starve them out.

Is that, according to Bob Lutz, it pushed Chevy to make the far more practical Volt. I've had one for 2 years, and love it, it wasn't sooo pricey, and you could actually get one the day you wrote the check.