It is clear that we need to undertake fewer journeys but car ownership has enabled people to live far from work, has reduced the demand for public transport and made it less likely for people to be happy with sharing their journey so it is going to be a difficult djinn to re-bottle.
Perhaps, ultimately, passengers could book their journeys to be serviced by a fleet of driverless, intelligent, taxis which could pick others up along the way taking each individual from door to door efficiently - but I don’t see the state of the art being anything like reliable enough for the next decade, perhaps longer.
There are so many suggestions put forward about transport for the future in order to bring about zero emissions and I feel sure that some will come to pass but it will never be a one size fits all situation.
Our daughter and her family live in a European capital city and don’t own a car, they have no need to, they cycle and use the amazing public transport network, obviously there isnt a cat in hells chance of the same system working in a rural location so what suggestions are being put forward for such areas? EV’s are certainly partly the answer but shared ownership, now that would be interesting.
Sounds just like the sort of stuff that the Paris-based politicians come up with and forget about those of us who are rural. So they put extra tax on petrol because Parisians don’t need it. Whereas rurally they will never provide these things and have in fact, in our area of the Lot, removed the few previously existing public transport options.
The idea of shared, driverless cars is good and much more practical than busses etc for those of us that don’t live in an urban centre. When we moved to this village in 1990 there were 4 busses per week, with 2 on Saturday. Predictably that became zero busses, with the nearest bus stop now being 4.5km away and the nearest station around 6km. School busses still run, which IS good, but don’t help the portion of the population that might forgo personal transport.
This goes to prove how stupid people are. As the article says, you can get third party battery replacements for less than a third of the Tesla price quoted. The idiot owner must, literally, have money to burn. His 5 minutes of fame must be worth a lot to him.
P.S. Tesla (& all other) batteries have moved on since this one was made in 2013.
On one hand, yes it was fairly trivial. On the other the camera thing seems to be a design/manufacturing problem with the placement of the cables running to the camera.
Obviously this sort of thing takes on more importance with cars which are supposed to have some degree of autonomy - a camera is one thing but a radar or lidar sensor is quite another.
At least it doesn’t change my opinion of Tesla’s build quality
Owned plenty of hifi where cables ran in the wrong places, one capstan rubbed through a ribbon cable. Happens all the time but shouldn’t. Takes a brave person to criticise their companies product so people often shut up until something happens later.
Apple (in)famously have problems with LCD cables on some models which are just a tiny bit too short - resulting in expensive repairs (or replacements of entire laptops) needed. It’s not just Tesla, I agree.
Just seen an article - doubtless from a press release of theirs - that a new startup “Our Next Energy” (ONE) has grafted their own battery into a Tesla S and got 1200 miles. Currently Tesla’s best mileage is about 600.
With a bit of luck this will spread down the EV market and eventually make a cr*p battery replaceable by a choice of compatibles.
Without a doubt, maybe some warranty issues for some but most batteries wont need replacing until after the warranty is out. Then we may have issues with non manufacturers parts being used, this is a law that the EU is trying to push through but also the insurance world will have to give their permission no doubt.
Provided legislation sets standards that compatible batteries are required to achieve then this is fine. If on the other hand, say, a government with a set of car manufacturers in its country or Continent wanted to use laws to insist their own manufacturers could prevent to use of perfectly effective (or, even better quality) compatible parts so that their own mamufacturers can continue to overcharge people who bought their cars, then I would have a problem.
Noting that here in France the government appears to support Peugeot, for example, denying the right to independent garages to perform many repairs on Peugeot cars. This is illegal in England.
This issue is going to come up very soon with the large influx of Chinese manufacturers who are on the point of being ready with large volumes of EV’s that could follow the early Chinese EV’s now here.
It would be uncharitable to speculate that the outsourcing to such places as China, of vehicle and parts manufacturing by USA and Europe could have enabled Asian manufacturers to use the IP they gained access to, to leapfrog steps they might have taken many more years to achieve.
Indeed most batteries won’t die until the 8-10 year mark at which point depreciation will have reduced the car’s value to 25% or less of new. Whether people will be willing to put a £17,000 battery in a car worth £10-15k is perhaps debatable.
Maybe the new batteries will be cheaper but possibly not if they are haigher capacity.
Just a slight correction - it was 1200km, 752 miles. Still reasonably impressive.
However, while that gives you a longer journey without recharging it does not change the basic energy economics of charging - which is that a 50kW charger will only top you up at the rate of 150 miles or so per hour of charge, and outside of Tesla’s supercharger network that is about as powerful as you are likely to get.
