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My next car (Tesla)

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 5:19 pm
by zonyl
My next car (Tesla). Well it will have to be a while, supposedly all production models for 2007 are sold already.
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2006/08/18/tesla ... er-videos/

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 5:56 pm
by whipped
an electric car? not ugly? fast?

:scratch:

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:06 pm
by crzyone
Wow, that is a great looking car!

Fairly impressive, but how much more efficient is a coal burning plant at producing electricity than an average gas engine to power a car? I'm not sold, unless you have a short comute and have a solar pannel that gets you by like the guy said.

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:15 pm
by whipped
It takes about 1000lbs of coal to light a 100W light bulb for 1 year.

:thumbleft:

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:49 pm
by p8ntman442
whipped wrote:It takes about 1000lbs of coal to light a 100W light bulb for 1 year.

:thumbleft:
.1kw * 365*24 =876 kwhrs/1000lbs coal that dosent sound right to me. What tree hugger site did you get that stat from?

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:53 pm
by whipped
This crazy treehugger commie website called "ask a liberal"... I mean "ask a scientist"

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/e ... g99187.htm

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 9:24 pm
by zonyl
crzyone wrote: Fairly impressive, but how much more efficient is a coal burning plant at producing electricity than an average gas engine to power a car?
Not sure if its much better, but most of our electricty here comes from nuclear a few miles away.

http://www.duke-energy.com/about/plants ... r/mcguire/

Edit: here is a good paper. Essentially the paper claims that electric cars are either more or less polluting depending on where you live (how you get your power)

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilk ... hlong.html
Conclusion
At present, for the vast majority of the country, neither electric vehicles or comparable gasoline-powered vehicles holds a solid advantage over the other in cleanliness. This balance will probably not change any time in the near future as the problem with electric vehicles is not inherent to them, but rather to the means by which we generate our electricity. Although electric vehicles offer some compelling advantages over internal combustion engine vehicles in terms of pollution management, the real advantage of electric vehicles lies in the future when more electricity is produced from cleaner sources. For those living in California, or in other regions with a high percentage of energy production coming from clean sources, the future is already here.

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:40 pm
by befarrer
Power plant by here burns wood chips

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:55 pm
by The Dark Side of Will
wood chips = carbon-neutral.

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:24 pm
by crzyone
Whitecourt powerplant is run on bark. Yup. Bark.

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:43 pm
by slow'n'steady
hhmmm... if i had to guess what the baby of a Lotus and Porsche would look like, that would be it

Elise+Boxter=Tesla?

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:49 pm
by crzyone
I thought the front end kinda looks like the new Vette

Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 7:42 am
by Kohburn
yeah back is an elise the nose is a vette

Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 7:47 am
by zonyl
I had read somewhere that the car is actually designed by Lotus engineers ( more than the fiero handling is ;) )