CBS' '60 Minutes' on Tesla

Gut4Tennis

Gut4Tennis

Hall of Fame
What is it about Tesla and its ability to make major media outlets look like silly amateurs?

The latest example came a week ago today when CBS' 60 Minutes aired a report on Tesla and its amazing electric car. It was basically the kind of coverage that any automaker would kill to have (and must have left flummoxed General Motors executives wondering why they never got it for the plug-in Chevrolet Volt).

Just one problem: As the Associated Press reported, a CBS editor made what is being called an "audio error" in dubbing the sound of a loud traditional car engine over footage of the much quieter Tesla electric car. The Model is whisper quiet, no matter how hard you push it.


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Gut4Tennis

Gut4Tennis

Hall of Fame
Substituting a piston engine sound on an electric car?

I dont think that was necessarily meant to make Tesla look bad.

They add in noises all the time and just probably didn't consider that it doesn't have a traditional engine.

>>>>>>>>>>>>Also, can we stop calling them "electric" cars?

The proper term is a coal car or nuclear car as most of our electricity is generated from one of these two sources.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
 
movdqa

movdqa

Talk Tennis Guru
In NH, our main source of electricity are the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant and the American Electric Power gas-fired plant in Londonderry. Seabrook has been running for quite a while without problems. The AEP plant is more recent and I think that the idea for that plant was to export power to other areas where it's a lot harder to site a new plant.

There is a lot of solar generation going up. My morning news alerts on Sunedison show a deal with Austin, TX to provide power for 5 cents/KWH hour (I guess it's fairly sunny down there) and a deal with Samsung to provide 525 MW of PV cells. There is a lot of solar generation going up around the world - but higher efficiency and the trend towards living in urban areas without cars is a bigger factor in declining gasoline usage in the United States.
 
C

chrischris

G.O.A.T.
On a recent trip to Scandinavia i saw rental cars that were loading up on Solar and one could book with a cell phone .
Cheap rates too.
Isnt solar a good investment over time i.e. you get free energy after a certain period of time?
 
movdqa

movdqa

Talk Tennis Guru
chrischris said:
On a recent trip to Scandinavia i saw rental cars that were loading up on Solar and one could book with a cell phone .
Cheap rates too.
Isnt solar a good investment over time i.e. you get free energy after a certain period of time?
Click to expand...

I had a discussion with a co-worker who has invested in several solar companies. We were wondering how Sunedison could sell power at 5 cents per KWH (the power costs are around 11 cents where we are and neither considers transmission costs). We came up with these:

- Solar is a better bet in sunnier areas (New England isn't one of those)
- There may be carbon credits that can be sold to coal and diesel plants
- Federal tax credits
- State tax credits though I don't know if Texas offers these
- The power itself is free though there may be some regular maintenance required so there's a high initial cost for the panels and installation - so basically a loan for the setup and then the loan gets paid off from the power generation over time which means that the purchaser has to sign a long-term contract. There are companies in our area that will do this for you after looking at your property to see if solar would be economic
- The possibility of selling excess capacity back to the grid where electricity companies are required to take it at retail market rates
- Solar technology keeps improving whether it's reduced prices for panels or higher efficiency levels
- There's a glut of solar panel production

Basically companies have to run the numbers to see if it makes sense for them. Same with households. It is getting easier to make the financial case for solar which explains why there is more and more of it getting installed. I don't think that it's feasible to provide enough power for a car from a typical residential installation. If someone has a lot of land that they're willing to devote, sure. But that would be pretty expensive.

One of the large automakers (GM I think) set up many of their dealerships with solar car ports - so solar panels on top of a car port for cars in their lots. The purpose was to provide a charge to cars that had been sitting in the lot for some time where the battery might get run down.

We talked about wind power as well - wind has the advantage of working 24-hours instead of just when the sun is out. The big disadvantage of wind is that it has negative impacts on people living nearby. We have a lot of wind capacity (10% of the state's needs) going in in our state and it's located far away from populated areas (we have a lot of land that's mainly trees and no people). It's being run by either a French or Italian company.
 
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