The problem with Teslas

They don't work without electricity: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/tesla-rushes-keep-california-blackout-021814791.html

 

And gas-powered cars don't work without gas! So what is your point?

You might not remember the gas lines or shortages of the earl7 1970s...

 

Swapping odd numbered plates with a friend's even plate...

Good times. No, wait. Stagflation times!

Matt

 

I do, but with a truck with commercial plates it wasn't a problem. You could also keep 15-20 gallons in cans as a stand by, or worst case siphon it out from another of your vehicles.

What options are available to electric vehicles?

 

Generators, huge diesel generators.

LOL, I think it is funny that on some of the new reports, they were talking about how antiquated the electrical grid in CA is, and yet CA is demanding everything to be electrical. You just can't fix stupid.

 

If power is shut off by the utility company, surely the source of power for Tesla cars will no longer be available. On the other hand, under the same scenario, won't gas pumps be disabled as well as charging stations?

 

"...You could also keep 15-20 gallons in cans as a stand by, or worst case siphon it out from another of your vehicles."

 

There's a solution to that... a range extender trailer.
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Should be an easy fix with a solar system and battery storage at the house. Lots of solar in Arizona...not sure about California. Most don't seem to store it in batteries during the day to use at night, though. They sell back to the grid rather than a more off-grid approach.

 

Tesla sells battery packs for your home! Combined with solar, works pretty well. And Tesla themselves have said they are adding more battery storage and solar to the superchargers in those areas so they should be less affected also.

Or a generator.

The reality is that electric is the ultimate flexible fuel, because there are so many ways to create it. Unlike gasoline or diesel, which is fairly hard to make in your back yard (but not impossible, in the case of diesel).

 

This.

There are many businesses and operations that can't afford to lose power, like hospitals. They figured out ways around this problem many years ago...

 

Yup and all solar plants are backed by a natural gas plant

 

If the power goes out and stays out you will be in a Grizzly Adams scenario and drinking water will be the issue. The problem with electricity is not generation but storage. Easier to make energy out of an abundance of oil and gas then engineering something better than crappy batteries. Storage is a plastic can also made out of oil!

 

except that the power wall doesnt really work as advertised....
i looked into getting one installed as a substitute for a back up generator during hurricane season....but the solar panels and power wall were not able to harvest energy during the day and give it back efficiently and sufficiently during the night and next day, without the backup of the grid.

the next generation power wall may be able to do that, but the current one cannot.

 

It's a lot cheaper to make your own deep-cycle battery setup to store energy and use overnight. The lithium ion Tesla battery is way overpriced imo.

 

Here's one:


A Single Component Can Brick Older Teslas and Tesla Won’t Fix It


Though Teslas—and electric vehicles as a whole—were heralded for their easily maintained and remarkably simple drivetrain design, reality and maintenance issues have become a real problem for Tesla. While there have been a few outlying cases were major componentry goes catastrophically wrong, most of its issues have been confined to cosmetic or easily fixed problems. That isn’t the case with Tesla’s eMMC chip, which according to a number of complaints that allege when the chip fails out of warranty, owners lose access to the vehicle’s media control unit and bricks the car.

Link - https://www.thedrive.com/news/27945/a-single-component-can-brick-older-teslas-and-tesla-wont-fix-it

 

i can tell you from first hand experience, these batteries are very fragile - they can be bricked by all sorts of things, and then are very expensive and complicated to replace.
this is the major problem of EV and hybrid cars.

 

I've looked into this also. They are pretty cool ideas and they even have solar tiles coming out. However, I came to a similar conclusion as you. If they could make it cost effective enough to where it wouldn't pay for itself after 30 years it would be a no brainer for me.

 

I think the break even on an installed system is less than 10 years. For a 10kw system, retail price including installation is $30,000 ($3/watt installed), which doesn't include state/federal tax breaks. That system would offset $300/mo in electric bills. You could install that system yourself for half that cost so make break even less than 5 years. Panels nowadays are way less than $1 per watt with expensive ones like Panasonic right at $1/watt. Inverters and other costs would make it $15k or so and installation on an awning/patio or standalone backyard ground mount would easier than drilling into your house's roof. Deep cycle batteries can be pricey, but would allow storage to charge your EV car at night.

 

it really depends on your desired/expected power draw from the solar/battery array you have.
on my parent's house that i priced all this for in florida, the cost was about $87k, less about 33k in subsuidies, which brought it to $54k.
but even with this amount of hardware, the system would have been unable to run the entire 8k feet, and could only have run the ac in one wing, along with the kitchen. and even then, if you had a cloudy day in between, with still no other power, you would run into trouble at home.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/Father-eight-invents-electric-car-battery-drivers-1-500-miles-without-charging-it.html

 

Is it April 1st?

 

I was embellishing but in WA I have a hard time believing I could pay it off that soon. There is also a question of how long we will be in our current home which is the other deal breaker.

 

I’m not Tesla savvy - are the solar superchargers for home use? How well do they work - any idea?

 

Superchargers are not for home use, they typically have between 6-20 stalls and use a huge amount of power if they're full of cars.

At home there are a few different choices, most common is a standard 220V NEMA 14-50 socket. There is also a Tesla wall charger which can be permanently installed, they can be Solar powered, grid powered, or even by a backup generator.

If you've got Solar (which is a great idea in NJ, return on investment is like 4.5 years btw) during normal usage you basically use the grid as a giant battery, producing solar power during the day and sending that to the grid, and then at night when you charge your car you pull power back from the grid. You only pay for the difference between what you give to the grid vs what you take.

Now if the power goes down and you have a Powerwall, you can charge that during the day, and use that during the night. It also allows you to use your solar directly during the day. Without a Powerwall, if the grid goes down you can't use your solar at all.

Pretty high level summary, be happy to go into great detail if you'd like.