A 6.6 fold increase in the CPI over 48 years works out to an average rate of inflation of about 4% overall. Not sure about the methodology used here but the 2.8 fold increase in price for new cars could reflect a change in the mix of vehicles, ie. more civics and corrolas and fewer chargers and superbees or whatever was popular back in the seventies, but I'd also expect the quality and durability of modern vehicles has improved substantially as well. I always buy used cars because I consider them far superior in value so I am grateful to those who feel the need to do the heavy lifting in terms of absorbing depreciation and buy new.

DM I don't own a Tesla or Tesla shares and at live at an elevation above 1000 m in a city where the economy is highly dependent on the production of oil so your point of view wrt batteries is somewhat reassuring, cause I'll survive. Troubling however is that the latest leaked email suggested that in the 2nd quarter they produce and deliver a record number of cars and sofar that appears to be the case, although I suppose diligent sleuths will eventually find the lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations.

Dave So when I research "high mileage Teslas" I discover that there are a handful that have now gone over 300,000 km. Detailed articles on two vehicles owned by LA- Vegas shuttle service, Tesloop, say that a model x has logged over 500,000 km on its battery pack and actually is still better than 90% while a model s with 660,000 km (410,000 miles) is on its 3rd battery with the first replacement after about 190,000 miles and second after an additional 130,000 miles. Failures were attributed too overcharging in the first instance and manufacturing fault in the second. This is anecdotal of course and the age, usage and charging is atypical, but still to me it seems positive. I would imagine that given the data Tesla is capable of collecting, they have a pretty good understanding of how their batteries will stand up and the factors that lead to degradation and measures that can be taken to improve and mitigate degradation rates. So if one 90 kwh battery is capable of 1000+ cycles then I'd speculate that they can figure out how to make 1000+ the norm if it isn't already.

Why would you you worry about the "average" service life and/cost of batteries. Clearly Tesla is the only game in town and if the other autoco's don't respond they'll end up getting canned like BMW CEO. Even though Musk often appears to be working from the Donald Trump playbook, I don't see how you can ignore his April 19th, 2019 tweet .... "Model 3 drive unit & body is designed like a commercial truck for a million mile life. Current battery modules should last 300k to 500k miles (1500 cycles). Replacing modules (not pack) will only cost $5k to $7k." Is Musk completely FOS? Maybe but his detractors have been saying that for years and it looks like he'll be around for a couple more. Even if you consider gross exaggeration and say the body will only last 500,000 the battery 200,000 miles and refurbishing cost is 10 -12 K, those are pretty compelling metrics to me. I'd assume that Musk has as much information about the durability and cost of batteries so it really comes down to a matter of trust. On the one hand you have his 4:20 tweet which appears to have been deliberately misleading, or you can balance that with the fact that the company pretty much appears to be on-course to deliver the products they promise albeit somewhat delayed. The best power train warranty available for my Honda is 160,000 km but I have no doubt it will remain serviceable for twice that, so I don't see why one would simply assume that the battery warranty is the actual life. But this is all off topic. WRT the Bosch software, I'd expect this is something that Tesla has had deployed for some time now.

I appreciate a well turned out team of percherons as much as any city folk, but I suppose I'm not enough of a gearhead to appreciate the technical achievements of this vehicle, but at the same time I fail to see what this vehicle is capable of, that a model x is not? To me it looks like something that was pitched and proposed 4 years ago before dieselgate and now looks obsolete (to me at least) right from the get go. I buy my cars used and often at auctions and I can't image anyone paying more than 15,000 for the Audi in 10 years when it has 200K+ km, whereas a similar used model x could fetch twice that in my expectation. I note that the Audi does have the feature that you can tune the sound of the exhaust to the owners preference, which gives me the idea that you could mount speakers on the model x and play Wagner's "Ride of the Valkaries" as you swoop down the autobahn. Now that would be cool.

Call me a fanboy if you like, but to me, all this technical hype amounts to little more than trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Per vehicle consumption has declined from around 6 liters per day in 2010 to less than 2.5 lpd in 2018 (roughly based on the graph). The graph appears to show an inflection point around 2014 which is a bit odd because around that time oil prices were tanking and demand was picking up in places like the US. Its possible that China withdrew subsidies around then but it would be interesting to study what was going on.

Yes. Careless math. Too anxious to prove others wrong. I stand corrected.

or if the actual output from the 1 mw unit is 207 nm3/hour then the efficiency would be 70%. I'm not sure it would be safe to use the nameplate values as they seem to be rounded.

I think petroleum for mobility will be on a distinctly different track from coal and natural gas to produce electricity and heat. I think the big players in regards to petroleum nowadays, Putin, bin Salman and Trump (whomever he represents) may resist or try to slow the decline in use of oil but right now it's demise looks to be a question of when more than if. I presume the Rockefellers and Rothchilds have already divested of their coal investments and are most likely in the process of exiting oil and since renewable energy is too relatively simple to control and manipulate, the logical next step would be too gain control of nuclear power production and rehabilitate it's image which should be fairly simple given their omnipotence of these invisible hands. Curious though that they were unable to stop the fracking that unleashed gas and killed off coal.

In spite of all the numbers in this article I had to do my own calculations to determine that the current market appears to be a bit over 7 billion dollars and it is projected to grow to 13.13 making total growth in 5 years about 87%. Appears to be about 13% CAGR.

EP I'm all in when it comes to solutions and like most, I'm skeptical about FCEV's for most mobility applications but the whole energy landscape is so unpredictable you never know. For me personally I drive about 12,000 km per year and most of those are in long distance 250 km + trips so I might only be able to get 200 electric kms per month which wouldn't justify the extra cost. Ultimately a full electric would be best suited for me but I'd want to have the 300+km range that is only now coming out and for the amount of driving I do buying new isn't a smart choice from an economic perspective.

For context I searched online and find that an average ICE car production results in 9.5 tonnes of CO2 and produces about 4.7 tonnes per year from gasoline consumption (not sure if that includes CO2 burnt in production). Based on 2.35 kg co2/ litre of gasoline I calculate that my ICE car that gets about 9 l/100 km and will last at least 300,000 km will have a carbon footprint of 63.5 + 9.5 = 73 tonnes over its lifetime. It seems to me that even the fuel cell vehicle powered by SMR is a relative improvement. A substantial carbon tax imposed in the major manufacturing countries around the world could help sort out the virtues of competing technologies but I'm not too optimistic about that happening soon. Attempts here in Canada to impose a modest tax is meeting with a lot of opposition.

This report for the IEA sets the cost of producing hydrogen (uncompressed) via SMR at $1-3/kg depending on the price of gas. It also shows the cost of producing hydrogen from renewables such as solar or wind can be in the vicinity of $2-3 if the utilization rate of the electrolysers is around 30% or better and the cost of the electricity is around $30/mwh. Note that even though gasoline is a very expensive form of energy (comparable to C$0.35-0.40) per useful kwh, it still remains very popular. This report

The deHavilland bush planes (Beaver, Otter and Twin Otter) are venerable icons in Canadian culture. Even if the electric Beaver is only short range, it will get a lot of attention and demonstrate the potential of electrified mobility in these parts.

Apparently the model that takes on the corollas and civics will be named the model 2. hence 2S3XY. It appears the market is not too impressed with the model 3, so maybe a good time to get in. It appears to me that Tesla has built a brand similar to Apple and as long as they can maintain the strong brand they'll be able to charge a fairly substantial premium for comparable vehicles. In my mind there is no question that buyers will choose the $35k model 3 over the 2019 leaf even in the US where there is a $3750 incentive differential. It will be interesting to watch how it plays out over the next year.

I suppose the next Tesla will be a truck so maybe they'll call it model T, but that could be troublesome. My Honda Element allegedly has 75 cubic feet of space and that is huge so 66 sounds pretty good. A hitch, even to hall bikes on the back or pull a small trailer in lieu of a roof rack would come in handy for the way I'd use this type of vehicle.

I recall back in my adolescent days some of the older kids who'd been held back a year or 2 would show us how to draw soft porn using W,X and Y, but 3xy?

I have every confidence an automated market will work this out very well over time. Average daily charge requirement is likely well less than 15 kwh per day and the average amount of time on the road is less than 2 hours. So depending on the circumstances normal drivers will have 20+ hours to recharge for 2 or 3. There will probably need to be some charging availability in the work parking areas but I'm sure that will be feasible. Its a great challenge for city planners, utility operators and software designers. I'm sure they are up for it.

200 billion cubic meters works out to about 8 billion gigajoules which if valued at $5/gj works out to 40 billion. It wouldn't surprise me if there are petroleum resources off the coast of Syria as well.

Given that Hydro-Quebec's generating facilities are virtually all hydro and much of the winter heating in Quebec is electric (somewhat guessing but Harvey will undoubtedly weigh in), it appears that the reservoir capacities within their network are adequate to store runoff for pretty long periods. I don't really know the hydrology of this region but it may also be that lakes in the drainage basin extend the runoff period. The reservoirs must also have adequate capacity to accommodate the variability in annual runoff which could easily be 20%. It looks to me that the HQ system could be used as a backup to fairly large amounts of unreliable electricity (wind and solar). Allowing solar and wind into the grid when available while throttling the hydro. And meeting demand with hydro when unreliables are unavailable. One would really need to study the hydrology and demand to see how feasible this might be. The upside would be it would expand the amount of carbon- free electricity HQ can deliver without needing to add costly storage. One possible expense could be the need to install extra generating capacity to meet demands when solar and wind are unavailable. Maybe one option for the extra renewable electricity would be to generate hydrogen?

NCA does appear in the diagram. Perhaps the use the NMC 1-1-1 configuration as an example for valuation as it would have more cobalt and therefor be more valuable?

" 770 °C and a current density of −1.25 A cm−2 a steam conversion rate of 70% at 93% electrical electrolyzer efficiency was achieved" 4.8/8 = 0.6, or 60% efficiency so how do they come up with 93%. Considering that a substantial energy input comes from the heated steam which doesn't seem to be considered in the input and that the generally accepted efficiency for electrolysis around this site seems to be around 70% the results of this pilot don't seem impressive? Based on 60% efficiency the input to produce 1 kg would be 56 kwh. The best rate I can find on the hydro Quebec website is 3.1 cents?

If all the current autoco's follow through on their electrification plans it makes one wonder who'll be making all the ICE vehicles needed in 2050? Maybe US will become like Cuba with all their vintage autos.

Shouting seems to be the biggest part of getting anything done nowadays. My 60 kwh car with energy density of 3 kg/kwh will weigh 20 kg less than Harvey's 100 kwh car with 2 kg/kwh density. Course I'll need to stop for break every 2 1/2 to 3 hours but I'm good with that.