Featured Toyota's Newest Production Approach Could Be a Sign of Trouble

What, and risk not getting $15k or $200/month for FSD on the car at some later date?

 

i would absolutely take that risk. how many people would buy a stripped version, then upgrade to fsd?

i have no idea, but i'm not interested until it's fool proof, probably not in my life time.

and if so, trade it in on what you want

 

The problem here is lack of competition. having loaded models increases profits. If you look at the German makers they do offer fairly stripped models with expensive Ala carte options. Guess which ones are arriving at dealerships? The ones that have expensive options. The way to get Tesla to lower its price and offer cars without some expensive equipment is to have competition. We have been hearing its combing for the last decade. Hopefully it will be here soon.

 

believe me, i understand completely. i'm in no rush, the world has many major problems that electric cars are not going solve. we'll get there eventually

 

I didn't phrase that clearly. Would Elon risk a future FSD sale?

 

of course not, that's why i added the rotfl emoji

 

Trying to get everyone to use EVs without, also, working on WHERE all that electricity is going to come from to charge all those batteries is just stupid. Elon was right in his recent tweet, we need to build many more nuclear power plants to get the power we need. Solar and wind is just not the solution and are we really going to just build more coal power plants?
Like I tell my EV friends, "The day your vehicle ONLY gets power from solar or wind is the day you can say it's 'zero emission'" It's really coal emissions when you charge it up.

 

that being said, what if he could make more cars, as toyota is attempting to do? could that bring more profit?
probably not, since i'm sure toyota wants to build more cash cows, not ev's. and tesla's cash cows are loaded models

no nukes for me thanks. great in theory, but not human or terrorist proof

we could try conservation, the great american way

 

have you been hanging out with that Angry Kid Greta thumberg?

 

nah, i was born conservative, just part of my nature. i've always been careful with natural resources, and why i bought my first prius.

 

So are you saying a fool will be driving it?


Mike

 

There is plenty of capacity to charge a car for everyone at night.
Here is the math.
12000 miles per year at 4 miles/kwh means 3000 kwh per family or 250 kwh/month.
The typical household usage is about 10,000 kwh per year so this is a 30% increase in residential usage.
Residential usage is about 21% of total usage in the US, so the total increase is about 1/5th of 30% or 6% total.
That's right. 6%. A 6% increase in electrical production gets every family one BEV
Even if you increase the miles and decrease the miles/kwh it is still very doable, today.
Say 15,000 miles and only 3 miles/kwh gives a grand total of 5000 kwh per family and a 10% increase.

Note that the grid can handle this because night time usage is about 30% less than the daytime peak.

Now there is the issue of where does that extra fuel come from at night. We are talking about 6% to 10% increase over a decade or two as we shift to EVs. Plenty of time to install any number of technologies including nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal or even to reduce home heating and cooling via heat pumps and better insulation.

Mike

 

We are working on where that electricity will come from, and most places aren't building coal. Even if coal powered, an EV can still end up with lower emissions than an ICE car. The US isn't building coal.

There are more options for renewable energy storage than batteries.

Nuclear should be part of the solution. Coal exposes the public to more radiation. It has a bad rep and costs more though.

The 'micro' plants that can shipped as an oversized load virtually are. They are essentially giant batteries in use. Once assembled at the factory, the fuel can't be accessed.

One of the risks with current plants is the old fuel. We could be recycling that to refuel plants.

 

Is that a typo, or a play on the current state of back-orders?

 

I still want to see a deal where the US Navy produces the steam, and the government leases spigots off the manifold.

 

We’ll he did take their Toyota+GM plant and already set newer production records.

Bob Wilson

 

there are a lot of fools driving tesla's

 

Is that counting the tents?

 

So everyone gets home at night about 6 PM when temperatures haven't dropped. Turns on the lights, HVAC, big screen, opens the refrigerator, opens the freezer, uses the oven and microwave, runs the washer, ... after coming in just having plugged in their EV. Factories run mostly 2 or 3 shifts and offices are lit and HVACed 24 hours a day. Stores are still open and freezer doors are being opened as people shop. And that charging doesn't contribute to a peak?

My peak billing doesn't end till 9 PM. And by just before then the cars are still at peak charging rate.

So maybe if everyone didn't start charging till after 9....???

 

You can schedule a departure time in the morning and your car will compute a start time.
Since most people only drive 25-50 miles in a day this will only take an hour or two, so maybe you start at 5am and someone else starts charging at 4am. Car makers could also program in a randomized start time or variable slow ramp up so everyone doesn't start charging at the same time...but you could always force a start now if you needed it

Of course any charging at or near the peak of the day will contribute to a higher peak. TOU pricing will nudge many to charge whenever the power company really needs the extra margin. In reality, in most locations the peak of the day isn't the peak of the season as well. It is only a dozen days of the year, typically, that really matter. A few years ago Tesla sent a courtesy message to all screens in a geofenced area that said something to the effect of tomorrow is a peak energy day...please charge in advance and not between 2pm and 7pm if possible.
Not in my area but they also gave 1/2 price (or something) rates at Superchargers early in the day to get people to shift their charging time.
I'm sure they they collected all the aggregated realtime charging data and were able to determine how much effect they had.
Who knows, maybe they sent messages to some cars and not others and compared charging stats to determine how much the message affected behaviour.

There are numerous incentives that could be implemented, unlike with ICE cars refueling.