Panasonic Invests/Buys Into $30 Million in Tesla

[chunkymonster]

Big fan of Tesla and glad to hear that they are making strides to secure themselves.

The Model S looks amazing and has some great specs. I could easily replace my Toyota Camry with a Model S and the 300 mile battery pack option.

 

[Blessedman]

Oh how times have changed. Back in the 60's the top three automakers wanted to join forces to tackle the emissions problem. They wanted one universal solution that would keep cost super low and would have advanced emission control considerably. The government stepped in and said NO...

 

[dustcrusher]

[citation][nom]husker[/nom]Great comment supertrek, but I'd like to point out one other thing about ethanol - there's a catch: According to scientists in New York and California, it takes more energy to make ethanol than you get back in fuel savings. According to David Pimentel of Cornell University, it takes the equivalent of 1.29 gallons of gasoline to produce enough ethanol to replace one gallon of gasoline at the pump. Instead of making the nation more energy self-sufficient, ethanol production actually increases our need for oil and gas imports. Not to mention driving up food costs, etc.[/citation]

With current technology and especially if corn is the base material, it's absolutely true. Corn-based ethanol should be nothing more than a research tool; using corn for fuel will not be viable long-term. Even if we ignore the food issue, farmers have told me that corn is one of the least efficient output-per-acre crops. Switchgrass would be better (I'm going to leave hemp out of this for now), and the algae-based production that's being researched will be far and away the most cost-effective if it plays out.

Point is, whether electric or ethanol, relatively new technologies tend to be less efficient. As computer nerds we all know this. I hope Tesla can make it work; I dream of building a custom solar garage to go with a Tesla so that at least some of its power consumption is off the grid.

 

[Guest]

@chunkymonster

Camry decked out sets you back $28k (at max)
Model S $49k

$22k can be classified as easy.......

 

[bayouboy]

[citation][nom]supertrek32[/nom]Not... really...Many of the materials in batteries can be reclaimed/recycled, and there's many different ways of making batteries with various materials. Natural gas is non renewable and will run out eventually - and very quickly if we decided to use it to replace gasoline.Let's take a quick chemistry lesson. Natural gas and gasoline are both a collection of various chemicals made from carbon and hydrogen. By breaking the bonds between carbon and hydrogen, energy is released, which we use. So the more hydrogen, the better. Here are the normal chemicals gasoline is made of:C5H12 (Pentane)C6H14 (Hexane)C7H16 (Heptane)C8H17 (Octane)Everything there has a lot of hydrogen. Ever wondered why octane is always listed at a gas station? It holds the most energy (in the form of hydrogen), so having more of it in your gas means your gas has more energy.Now lets look at the chemicals making up natural gas:CH4 (Methane)C2H6 (Ethane)C3H8 (Propane)C4H10 (Butane)Understand now? That's a lot less hydrogen. Less hydrogen means less energy. Which means you need more of the stuff to get the same amount of energy. Which means we'll use up natural gas twice as fast as we use up gas. Gas is just another fossil fuel, which means we'll run out in the future again, and faster than we ran out of gas. It's just not feasible. It's a stop-gap measure at best.Not quite related, but I think as long as I'm bringing up chemistry, I'll show why ethanol is so inefficient. Ethanol is C2H6O. It has a hydroxyl (OH) group in it. Breaking this off the carbon doesn't give off us any energy. The thing that makes us want to use ethanol so badly is the fact we can grow it in a field. Inefficiency doesn't matter as much if it gets the job done and you have an unlimited supply.[/citation]

So wrong on so many levels. Where to start?

First of all, Octane as in CH3(CH2)6CH3 has no direct relation to the Octane Rating which is the numbers ranging from 85 to 92 at the pump. Octane Rating is a measure of resistance for all fuels to autoignition. Also, Octane does not hold the most energy. Decane CH3(CH2)8CH3 is even larger than Octane. There are probably even larger alkane hydrocarbons out there. Main point to take away here is that Octane =/= Octane Rating. For example Natural gas has an Octane Rating of 120-130, far in excess of that of petrol from the pump.

While you are correct that conventional gasoline has more energy content than natural gas, it is not double. The energy content of Conventional gasoline is 34.8 MJ/L, LPG (Liquefied Propane Gas) is 26.8 MJ/L, and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) is 25.3 MJ/L. That means you have about a 25% loss of engine power and mileage using LPG or LPN over convention gasoline in an engine. Ask anyone who has converted their vehicle and these are pretty close to the real world results. Actually, due to the fact that LPG and LPN burns cleaner and more efficiently than conventional gasoline you get closer to a 20-15% loss. Consider that LPG is $1.50 per gallon, and it looks much better.

Where LNG and LPG truly win over conventional gasoline is the energy content by unit of weight. Conventional gasoline being 44.4 MJ/kg, LPG is 46 MJ/kg, and LNG is 55 MJ/kg. This is more important than volume because the same mileage of fuel weighs less if it is LPG or LNG over conventional gasoline.

Lets not also forget that LPG and LNG both have significantly less emissions than conventional gasoline.

Is LPG and LNG a replacement for conventional gas? As of today, its not, but having more LPG and LNG vehicles on the road today would be nice. Right now you have to convert your vehicles aftermarket, and you sometimes have to go to the next gas station to get LPG as not every station has it.

 

[AMW1011]

YES! ( http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs&feature=player_embedded )

Any good news for Tesla makes my day!

 

[Stardude82]

A couple points:
1)Lithium Battery energy is horribly heavy. Hydrocarbons are as previously stated are about >40 MJ/Kg. Practical Lithium batteries are

 

[bayouboy]

[citation][nom]Stardude82[/nom]A couple points:1)Lithium Battery energy is horribly heavy. Hydrocarbons are as previously stated are about >40 MJ/Kg. Practical Lithium batteries are[/citation]

Lithium Ion Polymer Batteries are about 0.9 to 1.3 MJ/kg. That number may double in the next decade.

 

[s4fun]

But you can recharge those 0.9 to 1.3MJ/Kg batteries at least a few hundred times, whereas the hydrocarbons becomes CO2.

 

[Vermil]

As long as there doesn't happen an absolute surprise miracle in battery developments (something that isn't visible on the horizon, despite considerable research investments, not the least military, for many decades now) anybody that considers battery-powered electrical cars as the future, hasn't got his paddle in the water.

 

[Glorian]

I like electric cars, i just don't think it's gonna work. They may claim the batteries are safe now, but I'm sure that's what laptop manufactures and apple thought about their products when they were first released. Also once demand for electric vehicles increase the resources for batteries are going to wain and prices will go up.

What of home electricity bills? People claim they barely increase, but that little increase in more homes over a period of time only increases demand from the power company who then will jack up the prices of their coal based power. I'm also sure those "free" charging station won't be free for very long.

Oh and god forbid if you forget to plug you car in, or run out of charge on the freeway due to faulty range meter.

BTW ethanol should not be mad from corn as corn is a valuable food source and ethanol production from corn only raises prices. Now if more companies do what Coors does with their left over beer manufacturing to make ethanol then we might have more of a solution. Bamboo is something we need to also look into for fuel production as well.

 

[mattcha]

nice.

 

[wotan31]

[citation][nom]supertrek32[/nom]Ever wondered why octane is always listed at a gas station? It holds the most energy (in the form of hydrogen), so having more of it in your gas means your gas has more energy.[/citation]
Wow, you couldn't be more wrong. You have clearly never studied hydrocarbons in your life. Octane does NOT hold the most energy, in fact, it isn't even present in modern gasoline except in trace amounts. Also, a higher octane rating does NOT equate to more energy. A gallon of 87 octane has the EXACT same amount of energy as a gallon of 94 octane. The "Octane" is a combustion inhibitor. 94 Octane is more resistant to combustion than 87 octane gasoline. That's the reason sports cars with high-compression engines require premium gasoline - if you put 87 octane into a Porsche, you end up with pre-detonation. The fuel literally combusts on its own, due to temperature and pressure, and this happens before the spark plug sparks - this detonation is very damaging to the engine and will wreck it in no time. High octane fuel resists combustion, and can tolerate the high temperatures and pressures, and will not combust until the spark plug sparks.

In summary, octane has absolutely nothing to do with the energy content.

 

[eddieroolz]

Very happy and proud to see Panasonic invest into Tesla. Any improvement in battery technology will directly translate to better batteries for consumer devices, too.