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Here is your open thread for the mid-week on February 13th, 2013. You may post random links and off-topic discussions here. Also, if you have an idea or a topic you’d like to see covered in an article, please make it known.
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Oil Up to $97/bbl Again
Seattle gasoline edging toward $4/gal again, draining more household income away from real estate; especially factoring in concurrent food cost rising energy hikes cause.
The good news for high energy creep again…..makes manufacturing locally in Seattle or America more cost effective; as world economy shipping costs become more prohibitive.
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The New York Times possibly caught up in fabricating a story to promote an anti-electric vehicle, pro-oil agenda.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/148426-tesla-publishes-model-s-driving-logs-that-show-the-new-york-times-blatant-lies
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 2 –
Yeah Kary
Watchout for the idiots that I hear preaching to me that I should trade in that 31 mpg 300 hp Dodge Charger and buy an over-priced foreign engineered electric car….
You can shut ‘em up with one question: “what kind of car do you drive?”
These buffoons all drive gasoline cars.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 2 –
NYT’s old motto – ‘The Truth Will Set You Free’.
NYT’s new motto – ‘Don’t Let The Truth Stand In The Way Of A Good Story’.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 2 – They really didn’t fabricate much – the takeaway from the story is: battery capacity is a function of temperature. Colder batteries can’t deliver the same amount of energy. This is why pure EVs without some sort of battery temperature regulating system are not going to work out well in really cold climates.
In our moderate climate here, it’s not really a problem, as evidenced by the number of Nissan Leafs currently in use (I usually see 2-3 per day during my commute from Redmond to Renton).
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RE: redmondjp @ 5 – I would consider misrepresenting the charge state, the temperature the heat is set at and the speed driven to be significant misrepresentations.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 6 – I’d also like an explanation for driving around a small parking lot in circles for 5 minutes, even if that did not materially change the state of the cells. What was the purpose of that? If he was doing this to test the low-speed maneuverability of the car, fine, just include that in the details of the test.
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By softwarengineer @ 1:
dude inflation is running around 2%.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 6:
especially if they deviate from the levels the battery was tested at. a gasoline engine will get less MPG if you drive it faster than it was tested at.
this reviewer just wanted to write the story he wanted. he got caught. if he had a great test drive it’s not really a story. if he ends up towing his tesla it is as we’ve seen.
people just seem to lose it when it comes to green cars and even stuff like green energy. for wind and solar you’ll read a million articles about intermittancy.
it’s journalistic catnip.
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By wreckingbull @ 7:
he supposedly couldn’t find the charger station. moron.
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By banjo country @ 4:
None of the electric car shills ever mention that rechargeable batteries only get around 1000 charge cycles before they start losing capacity. That’s only about 3 years of every day use where you go from full to empty. Not long after that you’ll need a replacement.
The tesla sports car had a flaw where if the battery drains completely, it bricks. People were leaving them at airports for several weeks and the minor accessories were depleting the battery. Not covered by warranty or even mentioned in the owners manual. $40,000 replacement cost. I wonder if the model S fixed that.
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By wreckingbull @ 7:
One explanation given was that what he was trying to do was drive around near the charging station to see when the car would die, and what would happen when it did die. Accepting that as the explanation, you shouldn’t mix doing that type of a test with doing a long distance driving test, or at least if you do, you shouldn’t complain when the car actually dies. I would also note that doing that type of test for seeing when it would die would be incredibly stupid, because that does not duplicate normal driving. At best it would show what would happen when it does die, and I don’t think you need a test to show that.
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By pfft @ 10:
See my prior post. But the only moron here is you. There’s also another moron involved if the “journalist” couldn’t find the charging station. Not surprising you would support a fellow moron.
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By Macro Investor @ 11:
As I recall that story, it was mentioned by the company, but some ignored the warning.
In any case, I’m not a big fan of electrics, but I think for them to work they really need to develop battery packs that can quickly be changed out at a station, so that you don’t actually own the battery pack. It would be sort of like the propane tanks you buy pre-filled. The advantage to that is recharging would only take minutes, similar to filling a tank of gas, and you wouldn’t need to worry about the cost of eventually replacing the battery.
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