I agree, but I think Mr. Musk having sit-downs with Congress probably helped design the exact nature of the spanking, or, more correctly, the exact nature of the method by which our government would spend (on the public face) the windfall of the spanking.
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Oil, oil & intake filters, brake pads & disks, alternators, seals, rings, bearings, transmissions, transmission fluid, clutchesā¦ The list of items that CAN go bad on ICE cars is insanely long compared to an electric.
I replaced the battery pack in a 1st Gen Prius in my garage and put another ~75k miles on it for $850. I never once had to change brake pads (they were gone by the time that car went to pasture tho).
So far, in taking the used Nissan Leaf from ~62k to ~75k Iāve put electrons into it, and that is all. A rebuilt battery is looking like itāll be about $2800, which differential is somehwat offset by the aforementioned oil/gas/brake differential.
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And in certain neighborhoods youād need to program it to brandish a handgun at the person who honked.
I believe I was watching Musk discuss his idea of switching battery packs at stations for longer range. IIRC he said that there would be already charged packs ready to go, Someone pulls up, the drop the empty battery & place the charged one in. I dont know how the Tesla batteries are in the car if they even remotely designed it to where that is even possible.
I think its probably a pipe dream to get there, It would take massive monetary involvement & investment to ever to get to a sustainable point he mentions.
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I agree, but not because of the massive monetary involvement. In order to make this viable, all vehicles would need to use standard packs, in standard places with standard attachments. Try getting more than 3 people to agree on something mundane likeā¦chairs, and see what it takes to get a consensus (hint: OBDII ports, as mandated by the Fed, is standard, despite any shortcomings, design flaws, or restrictions it may now present).
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But even that standard is three or more standards hiding behind a common connector.
The idea of pack swapping has been around for decades. I remember reading about in some book about the future when I was in the school library in the 80s. An Israeli company called Better Place made an honest go at it recently and went bankrupt. Tesla demonstrated the concept somewhat early on in the Model Sās existence and rarely spoke of it again.
The Model S (and presumably Model 3) utilize a skateboard chassis with the battery pack as a flat-ish module on the underside of the āskateboardā that can be seemingly removed from the bottom with no other (physical) access to the vehicle. Release a bunch of fasteners, the pack drops, seemingly electrically disconnects from the vehicle with similar ease; reverse the process to swap.
We have filling stations because liquid fuels for automobiles are either grades of gasoline or diesel: usually no more than 4 fuels (3 of which are merely grades of the base commodity gasoline) on tap that handily dispense into any vehicle thanks to a century of standardization.
The parallels with electric vehicles are poor. First and foremost the pack has to be designed for rapid removal and replacement. Next, pack commonality really really really helps (good luck with this between manufacturers). Lastly, while the energy within fuel or a pack might be fairly cheap, the pack itself is a nontrivial bit of capital thatās expected to earn it keep; same goes for all the equipment in a pack-swapping operation.
Even Tesla - always about the driver experience, sparing few expenses on their supercharging network deployment - saw the writing on the wall when it came to pack-swapping and went no further than their PR demo, presumably conducted with equipment from their factory purloined for the demo then sent back to production.
Look at it this way. For every Model S you sell some fraction will possibly use this service. You can make some reasonable projections based on where your customers live, where theyāre likely to travel (because youāre Tesla and probably already have some of the info), and you can make reasonable assumptions about when theyāre likely to need those hot-standby packs. So you can position your hotswap stations where theyāre likely to be needed and also have some idea of how many spare packs to keep onhand within a given service level. But since customers that want a hotswap probably _really want a hotswap right now_youāre going to need some cushions, which are likely to vary on a seasonal basis and also be subject to external factors like tourist attractions coming and going, festivals, hotels opening/closing, whatnot. So youāre going to have to move packs around as well. And youāre going to need to keep track of the customerās original pack - which is paired with their vehicle for warranty purposes - and canāt put it into circulation.
Iām not going to hazard a terribly specific guess on how much all of this would cost, but Iām going to guess it would be immensely expensive because of all the capital tied up, the operational expenses, and all the other moving parts - figurative and literal. I will hazard a guess that Tesla floated a couple of pricing models - all a fraction of what it would cost to sustain such an enterprise - and found nowhere near enough hand-raisers to make it worthwhile.
Contrast this to the supercharger network thatās more or less a onetime capital expense and then operated like a rental property - occasional maintenance costs with electricity being the primary operating expense. When Model 3 users start coughing up for supercharger usage, it might even start to pay for itself.
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All in all a fair comparison. A few rambling thoughts to follow.
You have valued your time at zero, which Iām thinking is the only unfair part of your comparison. Even just the oil changes take time. Realistically an hour when you consider shopping time, getting the car in the air, digging out tools, cleanup and disposal of the old oil. Not that these canāt be counted as free, but itās time that I donāt have to spend.
This particular vehicle was a LOT better deal. It was actually my wifeās choice of car, so I have little honest care about it.
We purchased it with ~63k on it and a brand new(ish) battery pack that had been replaced (at just under 60k) under warranty from Nissan for $6500 after TTL. Weāve put about 12,000 miles on it now (if memory serves). The battery pack is a 24 KWh and we can get about 80 honest miles out of it, but donāt use it up most days. Averaging about 3.33 miles per KWh, and electricity averaging $.12/KWh. 33 MPG is a decent average for a smallish 5 door these days (and convenient math) meaning that Iām paying about an equivalent of $1.20 per gallon, or about half the cost of fuel for a similar car.
12k Miles (so far) at 33mpg = 364 Gallons, or about $440 in cash savings over Gasoline alone. Iām expecting that Iāll be able to take this car up to ~120k miles before it needs a new $2800 (probably less by then) battery pack equaling about $1800 in cost savings over gasoline. At that point, the car will probably be worth more in parts or just as scrap as the cost of the battery replacement is a lot harder math. It might even need a set of brake pads by then too.
Had the initial purchase been any higher, this particular deal wouldnāt have been nearly as good.
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Look at how many car battery sizes there are. Even something as simple as that couldnāt be reduced to just a dozen sizes.
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Indeed. Itās an idea thatās not likely to happen outside of a particular manufacturerās ecosystem. And even within, the capital expense is considerable, which would lead to a staggeringly high cost for the users.
Better Place didnāt even make cars - they had some arrangement with Renault of all companies for their pilot. Wikipedia has a pretty detailed history. It was ā¦ complicated ā¦ to say the least.
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Some info on what happened to some of those packs can be found here: http://evtvindex.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-1-2014.html?q=better+place They ended up selling as surplus for under $4k each
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My last 3 cars had ātransmissionsā that didnāt shift, at least in the conventional way. 2 Priuses [or is it Prii] where a metal belt drive ratio is controlled by the computer. My current car is a BMW i3 and has a fixed drive ratio.
To talk about manual vs automatic transmissions is so 20th centuryā¦ 
Instead discuss which models have dual-clutches?
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Irrelevance already imparted here
There are all manner of opinions regarding the rapidly disappearing manual-shifted automotive transmissions.There are hard-liners who decry their scarcity. But 90+% of buyers speak loudly. Manufacturers build what sells.
Soon, the hard-liners will decry the scarcity of ICE vehicles.
As to dual-clutch transmissions, if built properly, they are excellent. That is why most race cars and super cars use them. If your friendās unspecified car was not a well designed car, then your reaction might have been correct.
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I hope not, but we may soon decry the scarcity of vehicles drivers can actually drive.
Iām an old competitive driving instructor. IMO, your prediction is already here. Most Americans have no clue about vehicle control techniques. If you travel widely, you will see how other cultures deal with driving instruction.
But, Americans are not the worst drivers. I think that honor goes to the Russians.
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I have no experience with VW automobiles. I know that Porsche builds a very nice dual-clutch transmission. The technology is there for VW to use, if they can afford it.
Perhaps VWās dielema is that the marketing slot-heads mandate a dual-clutch but also mandate a cheap price?
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BTW, my BMW i3 can normally be driven with one foot, as regenerative braking is quite strong and starts when I lift my right foot. Only if I drive aggressively do I need to operate the brake pedal w/ my left foot. That leaves my left foot available for latte and or phone use. 
Sorry for the double post!
Back in the 90ās I could drive my standard CRX, smoke & eat/drink while driving. How times have changed. Iām amazed I didnāt get into any accidents.
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Iām sure VW can afford it - after all Volkswagen does OWN Porsche, Bugatti, Bentley, and many more marques ā¦
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