Picture of "our" Tesla Roadster? (Correction - not "ours" ... it's "his"!)
 

My brother snapped this picture at a traffic light in Ottawa last week of our Tesla Roadster.

(EDIT: Jul 26 - nope, it's not the government Roadster. See correction in posts #6, 7)

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1306755173

I say "ours" because it's owned by the Canadian government (Transport Canada) - had gov't plates. For evaluation / research purposes. Riiiiiiight.

2010 Tesla Roadster - Transport Canada

So 1/34,409,066th is mine! Mine, mine, mine!

My brother says he observed the driver & passenger "evaluating" the car's ridiculous acceleration capabilities several times.

When do I get my turn!!? I only want to do my duty for Queen & country.

Playing with taxpayers' money is always fun !

lol, I doubt the doors would survive being opened and closed 35 million times. If they gave everyone a turn at the wheel over the next 10 years, that would be about 9 seconds per ride :)

What if we only count taxpayers with drivers' licenses? (The children can't drive it!) That's gotta get me closer to 18 seconds ...

Go for it, I can recall how effective it was when I would tell the cops that I pay their salary...

No, that is not the government's Roadster. They don't have a hardtop. They also rarely drive on city streets. There are two other privately-owned Roadsters in Ottawa - one red and one yellow.

Hi tes -

Thanks for the correction.

I should have fixed this thread when I learned that a month ago!

I was mislead by the unique plates on the car, which my brother (who snapped the photo) said looked like special government ones. That's where I made my mistake assuming it was the Transport Canada car.

They are special, denoting it's a "green" vehicle, something I learned from the car's owner at June's EVCO meeting (http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...sla-17960.html) .

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/graphics/en...te-english.jpg

But these special issue green plates are on a private car. I should have corrected this thread back then!

(I don't suppose you're one of those two private Roadster owners? ;-) )

Darin

:eek:

I'm sure it was *very* effective. Your fines usually pay for their lucrative overtime and their high-tech toys.

Well MetroMPG, it would seem to me that if the federal government has one for evalution purposes, it would therefore be a government asset. And as such, at some point it must be disposed of, and federal government vehicle assests get sold via auctions that are open to the general population. Maybe you can score a $1500 Tesla as it's sold off in between the broken down street sweepers and utility trailers!

I met one of the engineers working with the government's Tesla recently. He says only four engineers are authorized to drive the car. It has accumulated 40,000 km mostly on a dyno and on a track. They occasionally drive it to shows. They have a number of different vehicles, including electric cars and motorbikes, and are evaluating them in support of efforts to standardize MPGe ratings.

tes - how many kms on your car now?

One of the things I'd be most curious to see from their data (or any owner's) is the relationship between total distance driven & range / pack capacity. (Of course that relationship will depend on usage patterns & so will vary greatly among the cars.)

And most importantly: is there a "Tesla wave" when owners drive past one another? :)

I do find this kind of amusing, since ultimately our decision will likely be close to whatever the US EPA does. (You bet Canada won't finalize its approach before the US.)

But we must strive for "fuel consumption ratings sovereignty", I suppose.

It's at 14,500 km, a little over one year old, and pack capacity is down by 0.5%.

To my knowledge no one has come up with a Tesla Wave, although I've seen a suggestion for a general EV wave that kinda looks like a plug - kinda like a "hang loose" wave without turning your hand.

In any case there's no one to wave at in Ottawa. The government's vehicle is rarely on the road, and the Dymon Solar car (the yellow one if you've ever seen it) has only 2,000 km on it. Finally saw it just this weekend, see pic.

My understanding is that they're working with the Americans on this.

At 80 kph I get around 130 Wh/km.

...it's all about the non-existant gallon (MPG) for gasoline (ha,ha).

MPGe is based on energy equivalents (thus the e).

1 gallon of gasoline is 115,000 BTU.
1 kWh of electricity is 3,412 BTU.

So a gallon of gas is the equivalent of 33.7 kWh. That means the Tesla battery pack holds the energy equivalent of of 1.57 US gallons of gas.

EPA says the Tesla can go 240 miles on a charge (at a steady 55 mph it will easily do that). That is "1.57 gallons" equivalent, so a crude calculation gives 152 MPGe. I've seen numbers like 135 quoted.

At this point everyone starts talking about "well to wheels". Yeah, there are energy costs to producing the electricity. But there are also huge energy costs to extracting, refining, and delivering a gallon of gasoline. From what I can tell an honest well-to-wheels calculation is actually more favourable to the electric car!

So it's a hugely apples-to-oranges comparison. You're right that MPG for an electric car is pretty foolish, but they have to put something on the stickers that the average consumer can understand.

There are energy costs to making electric. But where should that electric go...directly into a car battery, or to power the lights and machinery at a refinery? Last time I checked, fewer conversions were better, right? :)

Yes, fewer conversions are better. There are indeed energy costs to making electricity. But there are also very large energy costs to making gasoline.

The energy required just to extract, refine, and deliver gasoline is sufficient, in itself, to drive an electric car about the same distance that a gas car could go on that gallon of gasoline.

Kinda makes the gasoline superfluous!

Aye. I want to bop people on the head when I hear them say "Oh, electric cars aren't zero pollution if they use electric from non-renewable sources!"

Seriously? THAT is your complaint about them?! Which is worse? Coal-based electricity being used to charge an electric car, or coal-based electricity powering a refinery to make gasoline that gets trucked (via gas or diesel) to a gas station that is using coal-based electricity to run the store/power the gas pumps?

Sometimes sheeple need smacked.

What about the large energy costs involved in producing the componets for EV? How about the fact that rare earths take enormous amounts of energy to mine and refine? Did you know that rare earth metals are mined pretty much exclusively in China? China has no emissions standards. The various parts of EV are produced all over the world and need to be shipped to one location where they are assembled, giving them a much higher energy cost to produce than a conventional vehicle.

No one knows what to do with the used batteries in an EV. They are toxic and cannot be recycled. The replacements cost so much that by the time you wear the battery out you've only broke even with the gasoline costs of a comparable vehicle.

how about the supply of rare earths. is that supply even large enough to convert a noticable percentage of the vehicles on the road to EV? No one even knows. If there is enough, what will adding car production to the list of uses for rare earths do to the price? keeping in mind most of the things that use rare earths today are small electronic devices using an ounce or so versus a car using several hundred pounds.

our energy grids today are old and running pretty much at capacity, especially in very hot and cold weather, when demand increases. What would everyone plugging in their car at 6 when they come home do to the grid? No one knows for sure about that either.

what about energy loss through transmission? some of the energy from the coal plant is lost stepping up for transmission through the power lines, some is lost travelling through the power lines, some is lost stepping down at the station, some is lost at the power pole transformer, some is lost converting to the charging voltage, and some is lost in the charging process itself. How much?

issues with vehicle range and response to extreme temperature go without saying.


I don't want to start a fight nevyn, and I hope you take this constructively, but these ARE good concerns about EV. And by ignoring these issues you introduce some irony into your calling people who are not on the EV bandwagon "sheep"

The rare earth metals is an issue. Unfortuantely there isn't much we can do about it. China has em and we need them to make EVs. There are companies looking to make motors without rare earth metal parts, but I'm not sure they're really catching on or are cost effective.

The battery packs aren't really toxic for most EVs since they're now using lithium. Hybrid nickle metal hydride still are toxic of course. But, all batteries are pretty easy to recycle and are worth a fair amount in scrap because of their precious materials.

The grid thing also really isn't an issue in most areas. Many thought it would be but companies have been doing studies and its been found that we can get a ton of EVs on the road without any issues. It'll take years to get that many EVs on the road before this becomes a problem.

As for pollution of a car vs a coal plant powering an EV its been found that in almost all cases the EV still puts out less emissions even if the electricity comes completely from a coal plant.

Actually, rare earths are not an issue because they are not needed.

The Tesla Roadster does not have any rare earths in the motor or battery pack. It uses an three phase, four pole AC induction motor (invented by Nikola Tesla). The fields from the stationary windings induce currents in the moving windings, which generates their field. So there are no permanent magnets in the assembly whatsoever.

As an added bonus, induction motors can run much hotter without any risk of demagnetization. Rare earth magnets tend to have a relatively low Curie temperature, and if you exceed it they demagnetize and the motor is toast.

I see you've swalloed the FUD that some "analysts" are spreading about EVs.

1. You don't need rare earths to make an electric car. See my previous post.

2. Internal combustion engines have way more parts - often 1000 moving parts, and many are made of special alloys, etc. The material and energy inputs required to build the mechanically much simpler EVs will be lower, not higher.

3. The lithium in the batteries can and will be fully recycled, like lead in conventional car batteries is now. It's non-toxic (unlike lead or NiMH). Geologically there is a huge supply available, which has barely been tapped now simply because there wasn't the demand.

4. Yes the batteries cost a lot, but the costs are dropping 8% a year. By the time I need to replace my car's battery in 7-10 years it won't be that big a deal.

5. Most EV charging is done overnight, when there is gobs of spare capacity. In fact, base capacity is a problem; you can't throttle nuclear reactors and the wind power comes when it comes. Ontario has to pay other utilities to take excess power on some days. Charging EVs at night will actually help. The time-of-day rates will encourage night time charging. My Tesla is programmed to automatically start charging at 2am every night.

6. Distribution efficiency? Are you kidding? Compared to gasoline that has to be trucked to the distribution points? Total energy efficiency for the Tesla including charging is about 80%. Compare that with ~20% for the typical gas car.

7. Temperature isn't a big deal if the car is designed well. The Tesla battery is liquid cooled and heated. My Tesla works just fine at -26C, even with the battery cold soaked (yes I have done it). In fact it starts up rather more easily than a gas car! For the first 15 minutes or so the battery is less efficient, but once it gets above freezing performance is completely normal. The Tesla "loses" about 10 km range during the warm-up period, which is negligible compared to the 384 km range of the car. Also the cabin heater takes a tiny percentage of the energy required to move the car, its effect on range is insignificant. The car also works very well in hot temperatures; if the battery pack gets too hot it uses the air conditioner to cool it. So the car handles temperature extremes very well, thank you very much!

I don't blame you for not understanding the issues; there are people out there spreading all kinds of misinformation, and people aren't familiar enough with EVs to understand what is truth and what is crap.

Tesla Motors is trying to deflect claims made by a blogger that its Tesla Roadster, if simply left alone, will grow to be a "brick." In electronics, "bricking" means to make a device no longer functional.

There was a lengthy discussion on the topic on the Tesla Motors Club. I won't try to summarize, see:

Do you know that you must keep your battery charged?

That is correct!

It certainly was...

Very true. How do I know all this?

When I worked there in 2010 I was one of the "evil" four Gov't employees allowed to drive it. At the time it was actually three Engineers and the Fleet Manager... I was the FM. That car was/is on special restriction and requires the Department Head's approval to sign it out, for very obvious reasons.

Here's a nice shot from the test track in Blainville, QC. I'm the funny looking feller behind the wheel:

http://images.lpcdn.ca/569x379/201009/24/202456.jpg

Here's the link to the article, for those who can read French:

Les autos de demain mises à l'épreuve (VIDÉO) | Sébastien Templier | Auto écolo

I can tell you that anyone driving a Tesla Roadster for the first time will literally be blown away by the telepathic accelerator response, buttery smoothness of the drivetrain, and the eerily quiet ferocity of the acceleration.

It has one gear... FAST. There's no waiting, no shifting, no hesitation, no tall torque-dividing overdrive ratios, just HUGE EFFORTLESS TORQUE any time you flex your right foot. It really is an amazing experience to drive one, and I'm sure tes would back me up on that.

The Model S will offer most of the visceral thrill of the roadster in a large luxury sedan. I hope to be lucky enough to drive one someday.

I just thought I'd dig up an old thread and expose one of those lucky Gov't b@$tards that, at one time anyway, got to drive that little red electric rocket for the sake of science and the betterment of our great nation. :D

Thanks Blue. FYI, we now have a Model S (p85) as well. It really is a rocket - very impressive!

CONGRATULATIONS!

Would it happen to be you I saw on Hwy 17 just East of Rockland on Sunday? I posted a thread about it earlier today:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post362326

No, not me. There are at least eight that I know of in the Ottawa area, and lots more in Montreal and Toronto.

Nice! Sounds like they're doing well.

I wonder if the guys at Transport Canada ETV have their Model S yet? It might be time to get out for a drink with them...