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I think control of the fake engine noise should be given to the owners of the car. Have a setting somewhere that lets you turn it on, and even select the kind of sound you want, and then modulate it to the throttle. But just putting it in as a default is annoying. The default sound should be the...

So all batteries have the same efficiency? All, inverters? All Motors? All transmissions? If weight is so important, why is the heaviest production electric vehicle also the fastest and the longest range?

Going lightweight is not as important as having a good drive train. Having an efficient drive train means more of the energy that leaves the battery actually makes the car go, and more of the cars kinetic energy makes it back to the battery with regen. Good aerodynamics are important, but being...

I think a hybrid wind/electric boat is a great idea. Adding solar panels may not be worth it, but it is also worth looking at.

Going to a station is less convenient than plugging in at home. People will use the battery only for most of their driving, especially if the battery range is more than 50 miles or so.

The headline should read "Op-Ed: Chevrolet Bolt Makes 200-Mile, $30,000 Electric Car A Reality – Congratulations Tesla". Chevy making a 200 mile range EV for $30,000 dollars is exactly what Tesla wants to happen, it is the reaction they have been working to catalyze since the roadster. Elon...

I think self driving cars will replace buses, but not subways or commuter rail. Trains are just really efficient, and when well implemented they are pretty popular. People like to joke about how the NYC subways are gross and full of weird people, which is true to an extent, but people still ride...

I think the need for driver competence will diminish more quickly than actual driver competence. As long as we still require drivers to know how to drive to get their license, and make sure that the AI controlling the car doesn't do things that are dangerous for a human to do and teach the...

I don't see a big advantage for a plug in hydrogen hybrid over a plug in gas or diesel hybrid. I think biofuels are more promising than hydrogen, especially at small volume like it would be if 99% of driving is done on electricity from the grid. It is easier to transport the fuel and it is less...

This isn't going to shock Tesla. This is what Telsa's mission is. Elon Musk got involved in EVs because existing manufacturers failed to innovate, and failed to move towards sustainable cars. Now, instead of raking in all that innovation cash, they are going to be anywhere from a half a...

Reducing the fuel requirement doesn't just save on fuel costs, it also means you can use smaller fuel tanks and a smaller engine, and it makes re-usability much more realistic. The plan according to the article is to actually use a jet powered aircraft that is launched by the rail gun system...

I just don't think the battery swap is better than the supercharger. It depends on what the price ultimately is, but if it costs as much as it does to fill up a tank of gas, I don't see the value. Imagine you pulled up to a gas station, and someone offered to buy you half a tank of gas on the...

Even at 6 kWh of thermal energy to refine a gallon of gas, you could run a turbine, transmit the electricity, and charge an EV enough to go a good distance. I'm not sure how efficiently the fuel for refineries could create electricity, but I'd expect it to be similar to natural gas, perhaps a...

The difference is in the amount they are spending. Tesla is spending a huge amount of money on the gigafactory and on new products, while other companies have a huge amount of money in bringing out next years version of the same lineup with slightly better performance, slightly better mileage...

It may become more feasible in the future, if one of those thrusters that don't require fuel turns out to actually work, it becomes much cheaper to get things from LEO up to higher orbits. If they can be made small enough, they can also provide attitude control indefinitely. It then becomes...

There isn't a massive debris field of man-made space garbage. The total amount of stuff in space is really very tiny. It doesn't take a huge amount to be a problem as far as collisions are concerned, because a single impact can destroy an entire satellite, but an object passing between a solar...

I am curious about how careful deniers have been to avoid committing slander or libel. If they've slipped up in this regard, I think throwing the book at them is the right thing to do.

Anything Tesla does to get around it will either give up ground, grant franchises to someone independent, or if they maintain control, the dealerships will go after it. If they have an independently owned franchise, the owners then have an actual case to make for forcing Tesla to continue to...

Replacing the battery when it runs out is less convenient than filling up at a gas station, let alone home charging. It looks to be more expensive than home charging, we will have to see how it stacks up against gas (if it ever makes it that far). And in the near term, it probably isn't any...

No, I don't think they should. I think they should continue to focus on the cars. Tesla does not exist to please shareholders, Tesla exists to accelerate the switch to electric vehicles. The stocks will rise and fall, but as long as they keep doing the actual work of building and selling cars...

I'm still hopeful for fusion mostly because of all the failed attempts. Throughout all of these, we've made little bits of scientific progress, and have not yet found anything to derail the whole endeavor. In principle, fusion could provide energy at the scales and costs needed with minimal...

I'd be happy with an autopilot that eliminates accidents in 90% of dangerous situations and triples accidents in the other 10%. That would constitute a 70% reduction in accidents. Of course, realistically the 10% it doesn't cover is likely the more dangerous times, while the 90% is relatively...

The technology will reach a point where the most dangerous thing it can do is hand control over to the driver. Until then, the driver and the computer will have to work as a team to drive safely.

If the electricity is that much cheaper, it will be that much cheaper to charge an EV. Hydrogen will still have a higher cost because distribution is more difficult. It might drive the price down enough to beat gas, but it won't drive it down enough to beat batteries. Sure, a clean and safe...

People don't have to ignore the fact that they will soon be merging until the last instant, as they approach they assess how much space they need to have between cars when they are in the one lane, adjust speeds to make the space available, and prepare to merge. They just keep using the whole...

It is possible to patent things that will never work. And you are correct that nobody has proven that this device would not violate the laws of physics as we understand them. Nobody has challenged the patents in court. But having a legally valid patent is not the same as having a promising...

I don't think limited range is what causes range anxiety. The problem is that charging an EV is fundamentally different than filling up a car. Pretending it is like a gas car where you take it to a specialized filling station once a week, and that driving hundreds of miles without ever...

The problem is that the people merging early cause the lane they merge into to slow down earlier than necessary. If people used both lanes equally until just before other lane ends, then it would be just as easy to merge at the late point as it ever was to merge early.

Self driving cars will be safer, that alone makes it worthwhile. It also lets the car do the boring stuff, like cruising for hours at a time. For the forseeable future, you will still be able to do the fun stuff, and you will always be able to do the fun stuff on a track.

I think it is plausible, but we will have to see. It definitely won't be as roomy as a Model X, and I don't think three across the back is going to be comfortable. It also depends on whether that 20% is a volume reduction, or a 20% reduction in footprint.

I'd like to see the numbers relative to other cars in the class. The Model S does not compete with the i3, one is a big luxury sedan, the other is a small city car. They just aren't in the same class so direct comparison makes no sense.

10 miles EV range is pretty pathetic, but it is a step in the right direction. People who by this car will notice the engine coming on partway through their commute, and start to think "I wish this thing had a bigger battery". They'll get a few short trips on electricity only, and want more...

In the part of the report that I can actually see, he assumes that the battery will be 70 kWh. Considering that the Model S 60 KWh achieves an EPA rated 208 miles, I think it is a pretty amateurish mistake to think a smaller 200 mile car will need a battery that is larger. Still, if based on...

If you see things this blatantly wrong, write to the editors. If there are no editors for the "news" outlet, then perhaps it isn't really worth having as source of news.

There are two ways to get to some sense of price parity, you can look at it from a consumers point of view, and figure out what car you could lease for three years for that price, and compare, or you could look from a manufacturing standpoint, and look at the cost to produce the thing. Either...

They conveniently did not compare to Tesla. They talk about "typical" EVs having short range. But to get price parity, you can't look at a Leaf. They are also doing the standard thing of ignoring the environmental impact of hydrogen production.

I look forward to the day that both of those can be replaced with electrics.

It isn't just poor design, the reason the cost is so high and the product so bad is in part because of the nature of hydrogen. To get it into a small space you have to compress it, that takes energy, it takes a compressor, and either you spend way more on the compressor, or you have a smaller...

If they are going to do multiple models, they need to be at least as different as the S and the X. I could see as many as three versions, one being a sporty two seater (or maybe 2+2) that is light, quick, and has range like crazy, one being a family sedan, with a bench seat in the back, enough...

It has the benefit of continuing to generate power after the sun goes down. With some designs at least, it takes longer to get going in the morning, but continues into the night. The morning isn't a particularly high demand time anyway, and electricity use continues from the mid afternoon peak...

Lux may be right in saying that the gigafactory's contribution to price reduction is not enough to achieve the sales goals Tesla has set out. But Model 3 is not a Model S with a cheaper battery, there are a lot of opportunities for cost savings without compromising the quality of the car. It...

True, it is the peaks that matter, but having 95% less to handle at the station typically means the peaks are lower too. There isn't always a strong correlation between peak height and total usage, but there is a often a significant one.

The moon isn't a good stopping point for going to Mars, because the Oberth effect makes it more efficient the lower your altitude on your escape burn from earth is. In the future when there is a small lunar base and thriving Mars colony, people might want to stop by the Moon just to see it...

Holding an earth atmosphere's worth of pressure against complete vacuum is far more difficult than holding it against one tenth of earth's atmosphere's pressure. Gravity on Mars is low, but gravity on the moon is lower still. Mars has more water. Mars has an atmosphere with CO2, which can be...

Full purchase price being saved in 10 years is a bit optimistic. And the Model 3 is still a few years out. Most of the numbers I've seen show about $2000/year in gas savings, and even if the Model 3 is cheaper than we can reasonably hope, it is going to take quite some time for the savings to...

Cheap gas vehicles are better than cheap electric vehicles, and will be for a couple years more. This should change soon, especially in places with high gas prices, but we have not yet hit the point where price difference makes EVs win. And cars that are cheaper are the majority of cars sold.

The idea that FCVs are competition to EVs is laughable. If you care about the environment and look into the actual environmental impact, EVs win. If you don't care about the environment, gas wins. If you care about the environment but don't actually look into the facts, you will be swayed...

Inductive charging is really cool tech, and has a lot of uses, but so far what I've seen just isn't as good as a good old fashioned wire when it comes to charging a car. Induction systems are less efficient, even when the device being charged is placed very well within the charging zone, and as...

Long term, maybe. Short-medium term, no. There are a good number of people who enjoy building their own cars, and those people are an asset to the auto industry and car buyers in general, but they are a minority. Tesla's goal is to get EVs to be the mainstream drive train of all cars, which is...

The fact that a Leaf's range doesn't match its MPGe rating just means it has a tank equivalent to less than a gallon of gas. If a gas car gets 20 MPG, and has a half gallon gas tank, it has 10 mile range, but still gets 20 MPG. Most gas cars have significantly larger tanks because gas is...