Comment Gasoline is way safer! (Score 1) 375
You see that guy who lit a cigarette while charging his car a while back....
You see that guy who lit a cigarette while charging his car a while back....
You're twisting the truth a little. This last fire is a twitter pic and the car has obviously been in an accident, that's it. The first was the puncture we all know about. The second was a guy who went through a concrete barrier and hit a tree. In both of those the passengers walked away, an impressive feat for the second one.
Point is there's been nothing "spontaneous" about these fires. If anything it shows a great track record for protecting the passengers.
Go to Youtube and watch the video of him taking a camera crew on a tour of SpaceX. He litterally walks through saying what components are and what their function is in the big picture. I doubt any other CEO or the head of NASA could do that. Best part is none of it is patented. So yeah, he probably knows more than you about hydrogen. Besides, you'd still have to get around the problem of hydrogen making steel brittle.
"In reference to the Texas fiasco, no - it would be undeniably good if he was trying to get the law changed because it's wrong, but that's not the case - he was trying to get a special exception made for his company, and fuck everyone else."
Cause you know the dealerships should be the one's deciding how cars are sold, and fuck (literally) everyone else, not just a couple car salesmen. That's like WalMart lobbying to not allow you to shop online. You really think if the law allows him direct sales then no one else would be allowed? The exception is for him cause the big players don't want an exception at all.
He may well be a douch,
Oh, he is.
but he's not the only one out there,
No, but the fact there are other douche-bags on the planet is no excuse for being one.
and he is doing something that will push us in the right direction.
According to you. Me, I fail to see the merit in the concept of having everyone drive around in what is, essentially, a big-ass pile of heavily polluting blood minerals that won't get you to your destination without taking a minimum hour break every couple hundred miles.
Not to mention, even if electric cars are "the right direction," Elon Musk doesn't give half a fuck about that - he's a capitalist, therefore he's in it for the money. If altruistic progress was his goal he'd be selling Teslas at a loss just to get them in the hands of the people who would benefit the most.
Also, it takes considerable effort to get hydrogen gas from dihydrogen monoxide. Perhaps he knows this already?
Uh, that was a dig, not a comparison or question of science. I figured it was obvious.
Lithium does not have to be mined for blood money (and there's probably lithium in the screen you're looking at, so you're a murderous hypocrite). The new chargers will work in twenty minutes from empty.
Now go watch a video of him being interviewed or giving a tour of SpaceX. He literally walks around naming all the parts off the top of his head and knows what they do. Name any CEO capable of that. First, the man really is a genius. Second, he's actually quite down to earth. Saw him get very emotional about the "perversion of democracy" that other automakers are going to to try to stop him. His college education is specifically for designing batteries, not what you pursue to get filthy rich, he's just good at what he does (and very lucky). They actually don't patent any of the the SpaceX technology, that greedy bastard. And lastly, no one said he's trying to be altruistic. And altruism isn't also suicidal.
Course, I actually know what I'm talking about instead of just spreading ICE automaker FUD.
True, but in this type of accident the gasoline tends to pool up under the vehicle and incinerate the entire thing.
Smelled funny to me too. Technically I don't see at as impossible if you aren't shooting for the perpetual motion thing. But, why would anyone build was is essentially a hybrid the other way around?
Worked with a guy once that insisted that he was gonna build this revolutionary new car that had a few extra alternators hooked to the wheels(?) so it could switch over to electric when it generating enough electricity. I tried going from the perpetual motion angle, to explaining how alternators work, to just the lack of power coming from one. It was one of the most frustrating conversation I've had. Worse than any creation/evolution debate anyway.
It wasn't exactly a campfire. The problem isn't the amount of energy it has but how fast it can release it. Sugar has more energy than dynamite.
Must not have really caught on then. I've worked in a few factories and have never seen one. Lots of electrics and the rest propane.
Part of his reasoning with electricity goes hand in hand with another project he's involved in, Solar City. You can charge it at home with essentially free, easy to generate, electricity. Charging a fuel cell is something I would definitely not trust the average joe to do. Also, some of the new charging station can get you from 0 to 300 miles in 20 minutes of charging.
Seriously, you really should read the correspondence linked at the bottom of the summary. It really is quite informative. I'll just copy and paste the next two paragraphs, the pertinent stuff anyway.
"It is important to note that the fire in the battery was contained to a small section near the front by the internal firewalls built into the pack structure. At no point did fire enter the passenger compartment.
You're probably smart, but more-than-the-entire-development-staff-at-Tesla smart? They were thinking of all these crazy scenarios long before you decided not to give them a fair try. Remember, these were the guys that offered to help Boeing with their battery problem. Tesla is really a battery and charging company more than an electric car company considering where all their innovation lies. If you are smart than people generally will believe what you say. You kinda have a responsibility to get it right. Besides, it sucks being called out when you've understood something as completely wrong as you have here. People will start thinking you're that guy that makes shit up a lot.
The article linked to a letter from Elon Musk. In it he wrote:
"When the fire department arrived, they observed standard procedure, which was to gain access to the source of the fire by puncturing holes in the top of the battery's protective metal plate and applying water. For the Model S lithium-ion battery, it was correct to apply water (vs. dry chemical extinguisher), but not to puncture the metal firewall, as the newly created holes allowed the flames to then vent upwards into the front trunk section of the Model S. Nonetheless, a combination of water followed by dry chemical extinguisher quickly brought the fire to an end."
You should probably know what you're talking about before stating that as fact.
That's some of the dumbest advice I've ever read on the internet. Let's cause and accident at highway speeds!
I think I speak for all of us when I say please swerve into a pylon next time you try it so the guy behind you doesn't have to.
Actually, the accent Americans speak today is actually mush closer to real (old) English than what the English speak. Around the time when the US was just some colonies, French influence on language had become popular among the upper classes. Never really understood the the English/French love/hate thing they have going on.
That being said, I watch shows off BBC (love QI) and they refer to us as "America" all the time.
Climate science does not do "scientific methodology" though. Where is your control, and where is your experiment? Because both warming and cooling is being attributed to global warming it is not falsifiable. How often do we see news articles that say about models being revised? What gets glossed over is the fact that it means previous models are wrong. Its also not as simple as 1 + 2 = "hot planet" either, so saying its either right or wrong means that it is without out a doubt, wrong. You can argue that its just innacurate, but its still very certainly still wrong.
When quantum physics does the math, they also have been finding ways to prove it (LHC).
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
