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grabbing a free charge during the meetings
8 responses to “@TeslaMotors HQ today”
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Our golden frisbee in the lobby
Everything that moves the car, from Roadster (foreground) to the sleek Model S
Drive train
Sporting my Nikola cuffs for the occasion =)
The front parking lot
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[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigduke6] – No,"free" as in free to me. I have solar at home, and the Tesla charging stations are free, so I have been driving for free since 2008. It’s a good feeling to not spend time in gas stations.
As to the energy source question, it is a common misperception. Tesla charging stations and my home run off solar. For those who run off the grid in California, it is not coming from coal. And, as the state increases its share of energy from renewables to over 30%, the cars become greener over time. But most importantly, even if you burn imported oil to generate electricity (like Hawaii and other islands do), you would be better off converting all of the cars to EVs. It is greener, cleaner, and cheaper to burn the oil centrally and take the hit from electricity and storage than it is to burn it in the sub-optimal scale engines that we have in our cars.
In the future, when all vehicles are electric, we will look back to the current era and marvel that there were a billion oil-burners driving around the planet wasting 80% of their energy as heat and applying only 0.3% of that energy to moving the passenger. Even if you want to burn oil, fracked gas, or a biofuel, for some reason, it’s better to do it in a centralized plant because of the heat loss in small engines. A modern Siemens cogen plant is 70% efficient. Our fuel-burning cars are 20 – 25%. EVs like Tesla are 88% efficient, so even after transmission line and storage losses, it’s better to burn fuel centrally.
The coal battleground is China. Anything we can do to shift their construction mix away from coal and to renewables and nuclear is critical to the fate of the planet. On a brighter note, and not widely known, we should see more EV drivers this year in China than there are drivers in America (and until recently, the U.S. was the largest passenger vehicle market in the world)… details
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I can imagine you Steve driving in your gorgeous Tesla running on free electricity with your Nikola cufflinks while eating your chocolate Tesla delight! Any special music should accompany you on this ride? I saw a while ago the video of your father in his car. I’m still dreaming of a Tesla since you showed us the first one! By the way, I notice the flowering trees in your area while we still have lots of snow and bitter cold. Enjoy your simplified day with your car.
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