A section of Stanford Park has quietly become EV Valley, with the HQ of Better Place and Tesla as near neighbors. Another EV company, THINK, offered a test drive there. And so I had to take it for a spin… off the planned route, to drive through the Tesla facility… and see various other EVs zipping around.
(amateur video)
This is the only THINK currently on the West Coast.
"You can’t talk while you are driving, you can’ t text while you are driving…
But you take video… Exactly ….Not suppose to…Tesla….." So you !!! =P
I’m not sure what was worse….driving while taking video or driving the THINK through the Tesla facility? Brought a giddy smile to my face reminiscent of the days when friends and I used to pull off pranks. As my grandmother would have said, you definitely are a bit of a "stinker"!
I understand how it would be hard for you to give an unbiased review, but for the common folk this at least would appear to be a possible purchase option. How much are they asking for the vehicle?
Dr. D – they have not announced pricing yet. They have some manufacturing plans for the U.S. that need to be finalized first.
For a city car, it seems just fine to me, but I have not been a comparison shopper there. I would say that from my experience, I will only buy electric cars going forward.
For me, the essential change here would be a larger foot well for the driver so a size 12 shoe can fit. I wonder if none of the Nordic employees have feet that big? =)
Yup…. Irking the burners…. 😉
Oh, and here are my thumb-phone notes from the Better Place lunch:
100 station, fixed battery test in Copenhagen. With Renault, Fiat conversions, and 2 teslas
Visitor center in tel aviv
6 renault Laguna conversions. 1.5km test track. Fluence test area too.Tokyo taxi project. Nihon Kotsu partner. 3 real taxis now. Can ride at Grand Hyatt. 22K miles since spril 26 across 3 cabs. Trying to extend beyond 90 day trial. Collecting massive data. Survey in cab for passengers. 8am – 2am
Kiyotaki Fuji. Takes as little as 60 seconds to switch. 12 batteries. Charged in temp controlled envt. latest design by us with large Japanese partner. Robot ballet. 2 robots put them on rack. 2% of cars but 20% of emissions.
Taxies: 17kW pack with A123 prismatic. Several modules. Smaller than planned for future.
Renault Fluence Z.E. ICE and EV versions with swappable battery. Late 2011. They will announce price before Paris Auto show in Sept. 4 ddor sedan
Can use various battery tech. We own battery. We can drive price down.
Secondary life battery uses are essential to cost equation.
Europe and china economics are much better than US.
We monitor battery throughout its life. Each battery has an ID. If older, we may charge it slower. Get more miles out of it.
Intel Atom Windows head end unit. Monitor in car.
End of life management: adv of our batteries.
To my question on who designs what:
Car and battery both designed by Renault/nissan aesc battery. If they change the battery size or shape, they will have to redo crash testing. But we could change the cell vendors or chemistry.No Betterplace option with the Leaf. Our deal is just with Renault.
20KW charger in SF is like adding 4-5 houses. Power draw not energy draw. If people charge randomly, can blow local transformer. We manage EV services to coordinate the load. Orchestrate charging off peak.
Driving style has much more energy impact than our server farms.
Think: we’re just friends in the industry.
We have 1.5 car partners. Renault and
Chery Automotive – pilot program. First prototype vehicle for ChinaTahoe charge station path: hopefully this year if things go our way.
US economics are crap. Our investors want us to look elsewhere.
My question about user behavior in trials so far:
In copenhagen, very little charging outside of home. People did not go to charging stations. Next Israel test will be with gas cars and screens giving feedback and directions on where to go for charging. Copenhagen test had no feedback. Tokyo taxi drivers: at first they cam back for batter swap when 80% full. They had range anxiety. Over time they pushed the usage up, coming back at 50% and in some cases 20% charge.I get confused about what Better Place is. We are a software co. But we are also massively capital intensive.
Fluence: 100 mile range
We have a contract for 100K EVs for israel and denmark for a 5 year period.
$3T market opportunity
While I look at you getting into this electric vehicle on such a nice sunny day, I wonder why I don’t see solar cells incorporated into the roof of any of these automobiles. I understand that you probably couldn’t charge the car quickly or completely, but might it not boost the effective driving distance on a single charge? Too expensive or just ineffective?
@Dr DAD: Koenigsegg are aiming to do something like that with the Quant: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenigsegg_Quant
Wonder if we’ll see one of those showing up in Mr Jurvetsons stream? 😉
Thanks P1r. It only seems to make sense to me, though the last electronics class I had was in high school. For those of us who park outside during the day the car could charge while we work.
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called TH!NK, electric cars, and we’d love to have this added to the group!
Dr. Dad,
Seems like a good idea, but the energy available from the surface area of a car is small compared to the size of the battery and typical charging current.
To put numbers on that is easy: You can get about 160 watts (DC, noon, full sun) from a square meter of collector. A typical 240 V charger (at 30 A) will be giving you 7200 watts.
It would be more cost effective to put up stationary solar panels that would feed the grid directly. They could be on a carport or a garage as below:
Yes, I realize it’s an available option on the 2010 Prius. 🙂
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