Guest essay by Eric Worrall
First I want to make it clear that I think Tesla responded to Hurricane Irma with exemplary good faith, sacrificing their future profits to send drivers of cheaper Tesla models a free range upgrade, to help them escape Hurricane Irma. But the urgent Florida hurricane evacuation may have inadvertently highlighted an unexpected and potentially catastrophic risk associated with government policies which seek to switch drivers to electric vehicles.
How did Tesla make some of its cars travel further during Hurricane Irma?
The electric-car giant gave customers a lifeline by remotely boosting their vehicles’ battery capacity. But this act of kindness also highlighted that it had been selling identical cars at different prices
Tesla drivers who fled Hurricane Irma last weekend received an unexpected lesson in modern consumer economics along the way. As they sat on choked highways, some of the electric-car giant’s more keenly priced models suddenly gained an extra 30 or so miles in range thanks to a silent free upgrade.
The move, confirmed by Tesla, followed the request of one Florida driver for a limit on his car’s battery to be lifted. Tesla’s cheaper models, introduced last year, have the same 75KwH battery as its more costly cars, but software limits it to 80% of range. Owners can otherwise buy an upgrade for several thousands of dollars. And because Teslas software updates are online, the company can make the changes with the flick of a virtual switch.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2017/sep/11/tesla-hurricane-irma-battery-capacity
Why do I think owning an electric car is a risk?
The distance between Miami and Valdosta, just over the border in Georgia, is 439 miles.
According to Wikipedia, the maximum range of a Tesla Model S car is just over 300 miles, though many electric cars have a much lower range, 100 – 150 miles being common.
This 300 miles maximum represents the range of a top electric car in perfect driving conditions. I suspect in the stop / start traffic jam conditions of the Florida Hurricane Irma evacuation, the range of even the best electric cars would be substantially reduced.
I don’t know how many car drivers heeded the call to evacuate. But at the height of the Hurricane Irma crisis, according to CNBC twelve million Florida residents were ordered to leave.
A gasoline car typically has 300 – 400 miles range. Unlike an electric car, a gasoline car can be fully refuelled in minutes. Refuelling lots of gasoline cars does not place a massive strain on the electric grid. If fuel stations are too busy, a well prepared gasoline car driver can carry their own refill in the trunk – a few cans of gasoline would almost double that 400 mile range, for the price of a quick 5 minute stop by the side of the road.
Imagine if the government banned gasoline cars, so all privately owned cars were electric. Imagine if every one of those evacuees had an electric car. Imagine the chaos if millions of electric cars pulled up at the same roadside charging stations at the same time, each expecting their half hour “fast” recharge, each driver utterly desperate to bring their families to safety before the hurricane struck.
“Imagine Escaping a Hurricane in a Tesla”
…. even more bizarre: Caribbean island saved from hurricane Irma.
News report states: It was in the middle of night, the sea suddenly lit up and calmed down while two enormous space crafts hovered over horizon.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SpSh1.jpg
(credit: Ekaf News)
I can guaranty the photo is absolutely genuine
In a green utopia, the peasant slime will use public transit, or just carry their betters in sedan chairs. No problem./sarc
…Imagine if every one of those evacuees had an electric car. Imagine the chaos if millions of electric cars pulled up at the same roadside charging stations…
Ah! But you’re forgetting – if everyone had electric cars there would be NO hurricanes. And all of nature would be sweetness and light, and unicorns would come down from the hills, and,. … what’s that? Stop it, nurse, it’s not time for my medication yet…
German Analysis: Florida Evacuation With E-Vehicles Would Mean “Mass Death On The Highways”
http://notrickszone.com/2017/09/12/german-analysis-florida-evacuation-with-e-vehicles-would-mean-mass-death-on-the-highways/
Little to disagree with IMHO…
Interesting, what this means is that those purchasing a 60kw Tesla are in fact receiving a 75kw battery.
So when you purchase a p60, you actually getting a p75 model. This has “very” interesting dynamics in terms of leasing such cars. When they get the car back, they can “flip” the software, and increase the value of that lease back.
This concept is not new (or a bad at all).
There are “many” examples of chip manufactures, laser printers etc. that are “identical” in terms of hardware, but have different pricing based on what “features” are enabled. This can reduce the cost of providing different models to different consumers with different price points (it often called capturing the consumer surplus – those that are willing to pay more can and often will!).
To be fair, this Tesla example is “somewhat” different since the battery is a VERY expensive part of the car. I don’t think anyone would complain that the cheaper “v6” like model does in fact have the “v8” engine. While it cost the same to manufacture a chip or a laser printer (with different features turned off, or on), an extra 15kw of battery is NOT cheap at all! (I should check, but they have discontinued the 60kw option anyway).
As noted, building two separate laser printers, can be more costly then selling one (so the noted IBM laser printer that printed at 5 pages per minute was identical to the 10 page per minute – only difference was software settings. And this practice is/was rather common in the CPU industry (same die, but some have hyper-threading or other features turned off or on).
Also, it really depends on how you spin this. Often when selling a product, it is HOW you present the difference that makes all the difference.
For example a major pop company (I think Coke-Cola) introduced a pop machine in Europe that would “increase” the price of pop based on the outside temperature. So on hot days you paid more!! Well, this started a near riot and threats of boycott. How dare you charge more on hot days!
The solution?
Hi folks, we think that due to slow sales on a cold day, we are going to give you a discount on pop! Same result, but now everyone is happy with the offer! So you now receiving a discount for the purchase on a cold day!
Also interesting is the numbers quoted here. 30 miles! Let’s do some basic math.
For each hour of charging you (standard wall plug), you get about 3 miles of range. So for 10 hours of charging you get 30 miles of range. And that standard wall plug is providing about 1200 watts (you don’t pull more – you often trip the breaker). So x 10 hours = 12,000 watts, or about 12kw. (close to 15kw – the exact rating of the p75kw model).
So just keep in mind that if you’re visiting grandma, and the only plugs are standard wall plugs, then you need about 10 hours of charging to get that 30 extra miles. If you need to go 300 miles, then you have to change for 100 hours – by that time the storm will have passed, and like most people you best have stayed put in once place (about the only exceptions are being in water/flood areas, and right on the coast).
And what’s with people running out and buying all that bottled water? Have kids not heard of collapsible 5 gallon camping containers? They are cheap as dirt, collapsible (so they don’t take up huge storage space). Just fill them up with tap water when you get a storm warming. Save a few empty water bottles to be refilled from above. I don’t get this “crazy” obsession with buying bottled water. And worse? The VAST majority should have stayed put in place of evacuation.
Oh well, no one is laughing at all those armed perppers – they are laughing right now – they have food, water, extra fuel and of course guns to protect their property and family – they are feeling rather smug now – guess who’s having the last laugh in this regards? Guess those prepers are no so silly after all!
Wishing and hoping all are safe in Florida,
Regards,
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
Having electric vehicles
“Imagine the chaos if millions of electric cars pulled up at the same roadside charging stations at the same time” and the roadside charging station is in the 52% of Florida that lost power at the height of the crisis? Fast charge? Slow charge? Try No Charge.
And sure, the gas stations ran out of gas too. But as noted, you can pack a couple spare gas cans in the trunk. You can’t pack enough spare electricity to matter. You really are a sitting duck if you have a 200 mile range affordable non-Tesla EV when a hurricane hits.
Will a “silent free upgrade” be followed by a silent free downgrade?
(apologies if this post appears two time – WordPress is acting up)
Interesting, what this means is that those purchasing a 60kw Tesla are in fact receiving a 75kw battery.
So when you purchase a p60, you actually getting a p75 model. This has “very” interesting dynamics in terms of leasing such cars. When they get the car back, they can “flip” the software, and increase the value of that lease back.
This concept is not new (or a bad things).
There are “many” examples of chip manufactures, laser printers etc. that are “identical” in terms of hardware, but have different pricing based on what “features” are enabled. This can reduce the cost of proving different models to different consumers with different price points (it often called capturing the consumer surplus).
To be fair, this Tesla example is “somewhat” different since the battery is a VERY expensive part of the car. I don’t think anyone would complain that the cheaper “v6” like model does in fact have the “v8” engine. While it cost the same to manufacture a chip or a laser printer (with different features turned off, or on), an extra 15kw of battery is NOT cheap at all! (I should check, but they have discontinued the 60kw option anyway).
As noted, building two separate laser printers, can be more costly then selling one (so the noted IBM laser printer that printed at 5 pages per minute was identical to the 10 page per minute – only difference was software settings. And this practice is/was rather common in the CPU industry (same die, but some have hyper-threading or other features turned off or on).
Also, it really depends on how you spin this. Often when selling a product, it is HOW you present the difference that makes all the difference.
For example a major pop company (I think Coke-Cola) introduced a pop machine in Europe that would “increase” the price of pop based on the outside temperature. So on hot days you paid more!! Well, this started a near riot and threats of boycott. How dare you charge more on hot days!
The solution?
Hi folks, we think that due to slow sales on a cold day, we are going to give you a discount on pop! Same result, but now everyone is happy with the offer! So you now receiving a discount for the purchase on a cold day!
Also interesting is the numbers quoted here. 30 miles! Let’s do some basic math.
For each hour of charging you (standard wall plug), you get about 3 miles of range. So for 10 hours of charging you get 30 miles of range. And that standard wall plug is proving about 1200 watts (you don’t pull more – you often trip the breaker). So x 10 hours = 12,000 watts, or about 12kw. (close to 15kw – the exact rating of the p75kw model).
So just keep in mind that if you’re visiting grandma, and the only plugs are standard wall plugs, then you need about 10 hours of charging to get that 30 extra miles. If you need to go 300 miles, then you have to change for 100 hours – by that time the storm will have passed, and like most people you best have stayed put in once place (about the only exceptions are being in water/flood areas, and right on the coast).
And what’s with people running out and buying all that bottled water? Have kids not heard of collapsible 5 gallon camping containers? They are cheap as dirt, collapsible (so they don’t take up huge storage space). Just fill them up with tap water when you get a storm warming. Save a few empty water bottles to be refilled from above. I don’t get this “crazy” obsession with buying bottled water. And worse? The VAST majority should have stayed put in place of evacuation.
Oh well, no one is laughing at all those armed preppers – they are laughing right now – they have food, water, extra fuel and of course guns to protect their property and family – they are feeling rather smug now – guess who’s having the last laugh in this regards??
Wishing and hoping all are safe in Florida,
Regards,
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
If your car gets hit by lightening you are basically safe in a Faraday cage and fuel engines don’t give a crap. But what happens to an electric car’s circuitry and batteries? Has anyone done a real world test?
Is this Tesla’s VW moment? Put it his way, if VW had issued an ecu upgrade to improve mileage, would they be sued by EPA for contravening their rules?
“I suspect in the stop / start traffic jam conditions of the Florida Hurricane Irma evacuation, the range of even the best electric cars would be substantially reduced.”
This is where electric/hybrid cars get the best mileage since there’s no idle power consumption, other than listening to the radio or running the AC. This is why allowing hybrids and electric cars in the carpool lane is absurd if the goal is to ‘save the planet’. Sure, you might induce a few people to buy them so they can use the car pool lanes for free, but all this does is add more underpowered cars/drivers on the road causing others to waste even more gas and emit even more trying to get around them, especially if you’re actually paying to use the car pool lane. It used to be minivans were the primary road obstacle, now it seem to be the Prius. It would make more sense to allow SUV’s to use the car pool lanes for free as this would reduce emissions and gas consumption by a significant amount. Of course, the idiots who think allowing hybrids in the car pool lane is a good idea would jump up and down yelling “Why do you want to destroy the planet?”, which just goes to illustrate the abject absurdity of it all.
If you’ve seen the movie Idiocracy, replace the catch phase “It’s the electrolytes” with “It’s the CO2 emissions” and it will illustrate what the climate ‘science’ debate has devolved into.
Without fossil fuels the population wouldn’t be as high today, because none of the advances would have occurred that have saved lives and increased food production. Travels to distant shores with sailing vessels – and steam still used fossil fuels to make them more efficient – would have curbed the population of every country outside of Europe to Asia and Africa. Starvation in those continents and population control would have occurred long ago. Population never really advanced until the industrial age. We can all have visons of how life would be today without fossil fuels. None of these “renewable energy sources” could have occurred without fossil fuels. Populations along coastal area’s would have been much lower, but still higher than inland. But running from stroms on horse back and in carts, wagons and buggy’s or by sailing vessels would have a high death rate as seen in the pre-industrial age. There wouldn’t be the warning system of communications we have now. Few buildings could withstand these storms without the advances of fossil fuels. The demonizing of CO2 is under 60 year’s old and all the advances of fossil fuels advantages are ignored by the ignorance of the population.
As noted in a previous post a few minutes ago: this scenario won’t be practical until we replace chargeable eCars with replaceable pre-charged battery packs. That’s the only way to quickly add sufficient capacity for an eCar to travel hundreds of miles.
It is not a question of battery technology. It is a permanent problem: you can’t deliver that much power through a cable that a person can safely approach.
WSJ
Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’ Shares Blame in Fatal Crash, U.S. Investigators Say
U.S. officials said Tesla Inc.’s Autopilot feature contributed to a fatal crash last year, faulting the Silicon Valley company’s semiautonomous technology.
Why did this come immediately to mind as I began reading the above article?
And then……
this:
Kumbaya, hakunamatata, don’t worry, be happy, yada, yada. Phffftt! Electric cars are CRAP (except for very limited purpose use)
sciguy54 is correct. This _is_ the model for selling software, and there is nothing unethical about it, rocketscientist. The key is visibility: You have to tell the customer explicitly that they are getting a limited system in return for a lower price tag. If the customer buys a car that is adequate to go back and forth to work in, and the product performs correctly for that purpose, then he has the product he purchased.
It is a legitimate business to sell upgrades. How those upgrades are delivered is none of the concern of anyone other than the company, though it does have an effect on the price of the upgrade: If I have to put a tech on a plane to fly 3000 miles to ‘clip a wire’ then upgrading your PC to more memory is going to cost a lot more than if I can do this remotely by logging in.
I am not particularly a fan of electric vehicles, though the idea of being able to ‘pump my own fuel’ via solar cells is slightly attractive, but I think that it is a total credit to Tesla that they broke their own business model to provide added capabilities in an emergency.
Jan
I suspect that autonomous technology software could be re-programmed in such a way that the vehicle may travel along a preset route without anyone being inside. If so such a vehicle could be an extremely effective ter0r1st tool, something that the European governments should give a serious consideration.
An interesting assessment at notrickszone ‘German Analysis: Florida Evacuation With E-Vehicles Would Mean “Mass Death On The Highways”’
http://notrickszone.com/2017/09/12/german-analysis-florida-evacuation-with-e-vehicles-would-mean-mass-death-on-the-highways/#sthash.If4Zx2Ko.dpbs
A “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (in an electric car).
What happens when you attempt a UK road trip in an electric car
(youtube — filmed by generally pro-EV guys)
Best part comes around 11:15 — In Which We Are Towed to the Nissan Dealer by an ICE Tow Truck. lolololololololol
#(:))
Note: They do not even address the underlying issue: the cost of production / purchase price of this car is too high to break-even without taxpayers, most of whom cannot afford such a car, to SUBSIDIZE it.
AND those same taxpayers must also fund the “infrastructure” to support this mostly wealthy person’s luxury vehicle.
These guys call themselves “tech guys,” but, I think that they are not ENGINEERING guys…. There is, clearly, a difference.
#(:))
“Electric cars area the wave of the future” (say they) — NOT!
Banish the ICE vehicles and you won’t end up with EV’s on the road, you will end up with, in pretty short order, bicycles and walking shoes. “It’s the economy, stupid” (vis a vis ICE’s). Think about it.
Is there any independent information on how well Tesla, Chevy Volts, etc. perform when driven into an underpass or across a bridge with water over the rear axle equivalent?
@ur momisugly Resourceguy
September 12, 2017 at 12:46 pm
You said: “I get it now. The EV is the MGB of a new generation. They too will need to learn the hard way that they will push the vehicle more than they ride in it.”
How dare you cast aspersions on the MGB! I still drive my 1969 MGB roadster several times a week and haven’t had to call a tow truck for over ten years. In contrast, my wife’s BMW 325i has been towed twice in the past three years.
The author never bothered to look at reports from Tesla owners in Florida. Recently a record was set using a Tesla. It went 600 miles on a single charge at an average speed of 25 miles per hour. During the evacuation many drivers never went above 30 due to the stop and go traffic. Gas cars in contrast had shorter range due to the engines idling in stopped traffic. While the gas stations were running out of fuel, the tesla charger network stayed up until Irma arrived. Tesla owners apparently also didn’t have to wait in long lines to recharge the car. The supper chargers can fully recharge the car in less than 1 hour. Gas cars had to wait in long lines to get to the gas pump only to find that the fuel had run out just before they reached the pump.
Silly post. How far does a gas car go if the tank is empty and there is no gas fuel left to buy???
Yawn on the battery capability vs software thing.
Airplane manufactures do this all the time. The physical airplane is identical, but the airline “buys” the weight capability and or engine thrust capability they want / need. In many cases, the engine thrust change is “literally” just a software change. And the weight capability change to the airplane is literally only changing the manuals.
Why?
Pilots are paid (generally) based on the capability of the airplane they fly – heavier capability takeoff weight airplane = longer range capability = economically more valuable = more pilot pay.per their contract.
Heavier (capability) landing weight airplane = higher landing fees charged by airports
Heavier (capability) takeoff weight airplane = higher air traffic control charges.
If a particular airline only “needs” a lower weight capability due to the nature of their routes, that’s all they buy. Why buy the 3/4 ton pickup when the 1/2 ton will do?
Now, as I see it, the more critical thing IS the limited range and no practical way for a vehicle user to “self” extend that range. I can throw several blitz cans of gas into the trunk or the roof mounted “coffin box” and stretch the 350 mile single tank range of my Corolla to 2x or 3x that without too much difficulty.
After Harvy and Irma, if you aren’t keeping 2-4 5 gallon blitz cans of gas around AND you live in an area subject to region wide natural disaster, you’re a fool. Some fuel stabilizer and rotating every 6 months to year and you’re good to go to clear out without needing external support until 700-1000 miles down the road.