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You may have heard about Tesla's "insane mode," which accelerates a sedan from 0 to 60 mph in a mindboggling 3.2 seconds. But Tesla is already moving ahead with something even better: A "ludicrous mode" that sends you from 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds.
Shaving off half a second may not sound like much. But the $10,000 option on the Model S shows off some of the advances in battery technology that Tesla is building into its newer cars. Under ludicrous speed, said Musk, the car will accelerate at 1.1 times the force of gravity.
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The Model S is also getting a battery capacity upgrade from 85 kilowatt-hours to 90 kWh, an increase of around 6 percent that will cost existing owners about $3,000 if they choose to upgrade. Not everyone should be upgrading every year, though, as Tesla expects to add around 5 percent capacity to its batteries every year on average. That translates to a roughly 5 percent annual increase in range. Musk said he expects most customers to upgrade batteries once every three to four years.
Not too much longer before "range anxiety" becomes an ICE problem.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday July 19 2015, @02:51AM
Well maybe there are where you live and frequently go, but that is not universally true. And maybe you have the ready cash to completely refuel on every occasion, but many people don't. In Western America there are many stretches of road, long stretches of road, where there are few gas stations; if you're driving in the middle of the night there can be even fewer you can use. And as a poor college student there were many times when I sweated the miles because running out meant dipping into grocery money and not eating for a week. If your only vehicle is a gas-guzzling pickup those issues are exacerbated.
When I was a kid in the 70's we ran out of gas a lot during the oil embargo in '73 and the oil shock in '79 because the gas stations didn't have any gas; there were echos of that a couple years ago when Hurricane Sandy knocked out the infrastructure in New York and nobody could get any gas. So I have had plenty experience with range anxiety, and it is forever indelibly linked with the internal combustion engine running out of gas, not with electric cars.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @04:07AM
Low grade subterfuge. Hurricanes knock out infrastructure but conveniently leave your power socket intact? GTFO.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday July 19 2015, @04:06PM
In Western America there are many stretches of road, long stretches of road, where there are few gas stations
...but those long, lonely roads have supercharger stations every 30 miles, right? No, didn't think so. Also, did I not mention the "jerry can full of gas if you're going out into the sticks" option?
And as a poor college student there were many times when I sweated the miles because running out meant dipping into grocery money and not eating for a week.
<sarcasm>If only you'd had an $80,000 Tesla, your money problems would have been solved...</sarcasm> (Thanks - I wanted a chance to find out what the <sarcasm> tag did)
When I was a kid in the 70's we ran out of gas a lot during the oil embargo in '73
Yup, we had the 70s here in the UK too (plus a coal miner's strike) - guess what we also had as a result: power cuts.
There was always a power cut on Saturday night half-way through Doctor Who... Anxiety? you don't know the meaning of anxiety!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday July 20 2015, @02:13PM
You don't need a supercharger. You need an outlet. It will take longer, but it might be enough. Every place in rural America has electricity. Not every place in rural America has a ready gas station. Also, we're not talking about a 30 mile range. We're talking about a range of 400+ on a full charge. Thus my original quip.
<sarcasm>Yes, because electric cars will be priced at $80K for all time and remain beyond the reach of the average person, in exactly the same way that gas-powered cars are only driven by millionaires today because nobody else can afford them. Oh, and there will never, ever be an aftermarket of used electric cars because as of 2015 humans have totally stopped wanting to upgrade to the newest shiny and pass along their cast-offs to somebody else...</sarcasm>
And as the world moves to locally generated, renewable energy supply shocks from a fossil fuel will not bring down the whole system, and could in fact spur greater, faster adoption of distributed power generation. That's a different discussion, but for now it boils down to this: we can get electricity from a lot of sources to the same outlet, but we can only move our cars with oil.
As to having your power shut off in the middle of a Doctor Who episode, yes that would be deeply scarring. Especially if the Daleks were about to "Ex-terminate!" someone.
Washington DC delenda est.