A Glimpse of a Green Economy
Tesla signs a lease to build a factory in San Jose, CA.
Tesla Motors makes a high-performance electric sports car that not only goes fast, but can go for almost 250 miles on one charge. It is a boutique (but high demand) vehicle now, but Tesla ultimately wanted to build more affordable, more utilitarian cars. The Model S is supposed to be a 5-passenger sport sedan, all-electric and also able to go about 250 miles on a single charge. This car is currently reported to retail at $60K.
At that price point, it is clearly not a car for most consumers, but certainly represents a serious step towards all-electric cars that function and feel like the gas-powered ones. Almost as importantly, this company choose to build these cars in the US (they did get a couple of tax breaks tho) adding a little pressure to the need to focus on enabling to creation of greener industries and jobs.
Tags: Delaware
This doesn’t create jobs for ExxonMobile. How is that good for our economy? 😉
That’s a pretty good looking car. Ferrari-like except for the headlights. I wonder what the performance #’s are like for it?
From the website:
0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds
Well, Mike, you could click on Cassandra’s link and find out.
I almost got run over by a damn hybrid in a parking lot yesterday. Never heard it coming. Can’t they add some loudspeakers with fake engine noise?
When I drive my hybrid, I always roll down the windows and make vroom vroom sounds…
I always roll down the windows and make vroom vroom sounds…
that’s why EVERYBODY in your car rolls down the windows… 🙂
” Output 248 peak horsepower (185kW) and 276 ft/lbs (375 nm) of torque. Redline 14,000 rpm. ”
Impressive numbers! If you thought the high redline of Mazda rotary engines was fun this thing looks like it’d be a blast. I don’t see specs for overall weight, but I do see they’re partnered with Lotus, so I’d put money on it being as light and nimble as possible. If there’s one thing Lotus is known for it’s making nimble, crazy light cars.
I really want one of these Roadsters. My Dad and I talked about getting one together — to share. (As if) My Mom doesn’t want proof that two of her family have completely lost their minds in her checkbook.
McCain invented it.
Gotta love it when “capitalism” and “green” can work together to create something like this. It and the Volt definitely hold some future promise.
Now we just need to cure the American public of their irrational fear of nuclear energy, find more efficient solar and wind gatherers, and make use of hydroelectric where we can, and this thing will be green in every sense of the word.
Nuclear power is not green in any sense of the word.
If Al Gore bought one of those for everyone in Delaware (I’d like a blue one, please) it might offset his carbon footprint.
Oh, and Lotus stands for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.
“Irrational fear of nuclear energy”??
Where ya gonna store the waste? In your backyard?
Technically speaking, neiter are wind, hydroelectric, or solar. The first two destroy habitats, and the last uses some pure nastiness in its creation. But compared to the current alternatives of coal/natural gas/etc., nuclear has them spanked all to hell. And, for that matter, nuclear still has all five of those royally spanked in terms of production… and still beats out the other semi-“green” alternatives in terms of production-per-cost.
And if you want to go ahead and dig the appropriate, shielded, sealed storage facility into my backyard, go right ahead, anonone. It would look something like this.
And of course the question with electric cars is simple.
Where do you get the electricity? Most of our electricity comes from “non-green” sources. So we’re just burning petroleum to get the electricity to power our cars. Either way we’re using petroleum to power cars.
Where do you get the electricity?
Even assuming fossil fuels, It is more efficient to get the energy from a central plant rather than generating it in your car. Also the generating plant has a hell of a lot better emissions controls than your car.
Most of wind power is green and so is some solar — the industries producing these technologies for deployment are greening up their manufacturing processes at a decent rate.
But the word you are looking for is actually “renewable” which doesn’t cover nuclear, either. By any stretch of the imagination. And nuclear is the most expensive option — where you MUST factor in its lifecycle costs that includes a substantial government subsidy plus disposal at Yucca Mountain.
There is no such thing yet as an “appropriate, shielded, sealed storage facility” including Yucca Mountain.
You might want to read to the end of the article you linked to even though your lips will get tired.
Decent rate? What, exactly, is that? The problem now is that wind and solar (and to a large part, hydroelectric) simply are not worth the investments. Low ROI means no one except those really dedicated are interested. And that is where cars like the Tesla and the Volt are going to start helping things along a bit better… at that price, the Tesla pretty much puts itself out of the market for people like me and everyone else in the low-to-mid ranges of the middle income bracket. However, for people looking for a mid-to-high performance sport car, the Tesla is towards the top of that price range, granted, but has highly respectable numbers, and thus suddenly becomes an option. Sure, some people wil buy it because it is “green” – the reality is, the vast majority of people do not give two craps. They want a return on their money, and this thing will yield it. Solar and wind these days, and for some time to come? Not so much.
“Renewable” is the keyphrase, hm? Yeah, unfortunately, reactors do need to be refueled… about once every fifty-odd years or so. With materials that are still quite prevalent and relatively easily procured, and will still last us quite a while. Which should give that “decent rate” time to get up to speed, and wind and solar the chance to finally reach appreciable rates of return on their investments, as opposed to being the relative money-holes they are now.
And you are right, anonone – there is no such repoitory. Yet. That is why Yucca is trying to be certified to start taking the spent fuel. Funny how that works… Seriously, do you have anything better than ad hominems to work with?
Reactors need to be refueled more than every 50 years or so — that is why plants all over the country have swimming pools full of spent rods that they need to get rid of.
Nuclear power plants still have too many costs that they need taxpayers to either fork over or guarantees that makes them still more expensive than almost every other option.
Figure out a way to get Wall Street to finance the building of these plants and get the Government out of insuring these plants and you may have a competitive product.
The problem with Yucca is that NO ONE wants a nuclear waste repository in their backyard.
Linoge,
I just didn’t understand why you linked to an article that pretty much undermined your point that we knew how to dispose of nuclear waste. You must not have read it to the end.
Mike the Racist is now a nuclear scientist. Do tell us why it is safe to store nuclear wastes at Yucca Mtn or in your back yard for the next million years.
“Figure out a way to get Wall Street to finance the building of these plants and get the Government out of insuring these plants and you may have a competitive product.”
And today’s Housing Mortgage crisis?
Housing was a competitive product, until it was open to those who could not afford it. Crash. Bang.
We need a failing education system, especially in Home Economics, Math and Finance. So we can have more people to go to the government to either Bail out, Subsidize or put into Prisons.
The new USA economy. Now if we rewarded the industrious, and those pursuing an education …
“Mike the Racist is now a nuclear scientist. Do tell us why it is safe to store nuclear wastes at Yucca Mtn or in your back yard for the next million years.”
Reading is fundamental Anon0ne. Did I say anything about it being safe to store nuclear waste? Nope.
anonone,
Someone anonymous calling someone else a name… oh my…
Define Racist.
Apply the definition to whoever you just directed it to.
Just how many people live within 20 miles of Yucca MT?
30 Miles?
You may want to check your math, Cassandra. For example:
From a study (http://www3.inspi.ufl.edu/icapp06/program/abstracts/6475.pdf) cited here (http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/06/solar-cells-with-407-efficiency-made-58.html).
Or take a gander at this humongo thing: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html .
No, nuclear may not be the cheapest source of electricity in the world (especially depending on which source you listen to on what day), but dismissing it out-of-hand as completely and preposterously expensive is just uneducated.
And, in reality, the refueling rate of reactors depends on their construction and type. Some last 18 or so months without fuel (though, for those, most of them only replace a fraction of their rods). Some last 50+ years without fuel. The plethora of spent rods is a problem of not refining the uranium as much as we possibly should have, the number of rods that are necessary in a reactor, and that most reactors these days cannot burn all the uranium (though we are working on high-burn reactors that might have a completely 100% burn rate).
The sun will not always be up, the wind will not always blow, but fission still takes place.
And anonone, apparently you were not the one who read the article at this point. But, as they say here, thanks for playing.
Mike the Racist:
No, you said “the” problem with Yucca is NIMBY. It is not. The problem with Yucca Mtn is that it isn’t safe and that a failure could be catastrophic.
How many people live in an area downstream of Yucca? How about anyone who might live downstream from it in…say 5,000 years?
Anon27,
Wiki it. And then read the thread: McCain Wants War with Spain.
Linoge,
I read the article. Yucca Mtn ain’t safe. Nobody knows what is safe or how much safe disposal will cost. So dismissing it as “preposterously expensive” makes sense since nobody seems to want to make the expense of figuring out how to safely dispose of the waste.
Speaking of cost, you might think about the cost of a nuclear meltdown (think making half of Pennsylvania uninhabitable forever) and the probability of that occurring (once in a thousand years? five thousand years?). That seems “preposterously expensive” to me.
BTW, I am not anti-nuclear. I just want to see the research done so we know what the real cost-risk-benefit analysis including disposal looks like.
As you say, thanks for playing.
It is uneducated to make pretend that the taxpayer burden of nuclear projects sonehow should not be factored into the costs of nuclear power:
Loan Guarantees
Tax Credits
Insurance
Disposal
And those costs (altho the proponents will want to make them hidden) make nuclear extremely expensive.
The plethora of spent rods is a function of the way that the reactor is designed to consume that material. Even with the so-called recycling processes, there is still plutonium and other highly radioactive materials that need to be disposed of.
No, Yucca Mountain is as safe as we can make it. Just like your car is as safe as we can make it, yet hundreds (thousands?) of people are killed every year in car accidents. Should we try and make cars preposterously expensive by giving them a 100% no-failure rate? For that matter, should we really have to do that with anything? And, as you and others have pointed out here, at this point, any solution would be better than the one we are struggling with now.
As for that failure rate… yeah, a failure would, indeed, suck. Massively. However, with the massive number fail-safes and protocols that have been built into reactors, they are safer than they have ever been, and are continuing to get better.
Do not misunderstand, there are faults with the system that need to be worked on and improved, there is absolutely no doubt about that. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this case will put 19% of the United States alone in the dark, with no better option for resupplying them… Either you are further mucking up the atmosphere, or you are only giving them more-expensive electricity if the sun happens to be out or the wind is blowing… if they happen to live in the right parts of the country.
I am all for integrating as many power sources as possible into one nicely balanced network (hell, I am seriously considering the ROI of installing a baby turbine off the back porch of my future house), but our effective options, at the moment, are just a wee bit limited.
There are two big problems for Yucca Mountain that no one has adequately addressed:
1. How to mark that area with “Danger” signs that would be universally understood for 1 million years. This is tougher than you think.
2. Transportation of the spent rods from the plants to Yucca. These will be on the same roads and railroads that you and your goods travel on.
“As safe as we can make it” ain’t safe enough. Nothing is 100% safe, but I know my chances of dying in a car accident. Nobody knows for nuclear power. 100’s of millions dead, contaminated gene pool, and an uninhabitable planet are big things to risk if you don’t understand what the probabilities are.
Wow. Fear-mongering abounds today.
First, Cassandra, spent fuel rods, and even brand-spanking new fuel rods, along with nuclear weapons and all manner of other nuclear-y things have been transported on the same roads and railroads that you and your goods travel on for the past few decades. And…
( http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-transp.html ).
More information here: http://www.nmcco.com/education/facts/safety/transport.htm . Pretty durable little boxes.
And then we have anonone, sounding like one of the anti-nuclear-weapon types back in the 50s and 60s, afraid we are going to nuke ourselves out of existance, only this time it is with the spent fuel. Do you realize just how much uranium there is naturally occuring in the Earth right now? And how little effect it is having on us? Or, rather, whatever effect it is having on us, it is simply part of our natural development/mutation/evolution. Sure, concentrating the spent fuel in one place is a little different… but end of the world? Yeah. Uh-huh.
The question of how to make a “no touchy” sign that will last / be understood for the next million-odd years, though, is an interesting one. The whole skull thing seems to have been a pretty prevalent “bad place” concept for the past few thousand, but it is an entertaining question regardless.
And a massive packaging up and shipment to Yucca Mountain vastly increases the risks. The current transport is relatively short distances for plants and owners to consolidate material. The fact that there has not been one accident in 30 years pretty much means that one is due — we are talking about the Government after all unless you are here to say that perhaps the Government in your life is, in fact a good thing?
Material that is moved to WIPP has a pretty set route though NM and the folks who live within a certain distance of the route have had to sign a deed modification, acknowledging that nuclear waste products are transported right by their neighborhoods. A nuclear material spill is not like an oil spill, and asking for a whole bunch of failsafes is not unreasonable (which is why taxpayers basically provide the insurance on these plants).
Linoge,
You really must still be in high school.
Uranium dispersed in nature is much more than a “little different” than uranium and plutonium concentrated into fuel rods. Ever hear of Chernobyl?
I never said that asking for failsafes was unreasonable, Cassandra. I only pointed out that the way you phrased your comment, it was inherently fearmongering. “ZOMG, they will be carrying exposed nukulear materials and parking it right outside our children’s schools!” Yeah. Just like they do already. You are right, a nuke spill is not at all like an oil spill… which is probably why oil containers do not have to meet the same survivability requirements as nuclear ones. For all we know, those requirements could be increased in light of the current storage solution – it certainly would provide a nice, modular way to put the stuff in the hole. And “due for one”? Come on. The probability of an individual shipment failing is a memoryless function.
So we went from talking about expended fuel rods to live ones? And then we went comparing expended fuel rods, stored in a way to minimize/cease nuclear fission, to live fuel rods in an active reactor that went out of control? Talk about moving the goal posts… You might want to turn that ad hominem on yourself, anonone, and see how it fits.
Wasn’t McCain against transporting nuclear waste through Arizona? Why?
s/cease/control in my last post. The fission will technically never stop in the rods until such time as the uranium completely breaks apart. Chain reactions (like what reactors need), however, can be controlled/minimized.
I’m talking cradle to grave – how are you going to handle it safely?
The French seem to be doing well recycling their fuel rods.
“Wasn’t McCain against transporting nuclear waste through Arizona? Why?”
Politics plain and simple. People are stupid and emotional. If McCain goes and says “yeah, it’s cool, send all your nuclear waste our way” he’s going to scare his constituents.
Bet that political ploy will play well for McCain in Nevada and New Mexico. Just sayin’
Uh… probably the same way we have been doing so for the past few decades. Not counting the Manhattan Project *twitches*.
Pointing out that this stuff travels in the same way you do (and there is some thinking about whether to transport it by plane) isn’t fearmongering, it is a fact.
The kind of transport that is being envisioned to move current stockpiles to Yucca (if it ever opens) are certainly on a bigger scale than the small movements for consolidation. There is real uncertainty if the casks will survive the right type of accident (rail esp), which is one of the reasons why the states closest to Yucca are saying No Way. Heck there is some uncertainty if the casks will survive to their engineered life once placed at Yucca, which is one of the reasons why it is going to be tough to get the million year certification (altho there is effort to change some of the test criteria so they can get their opening).
And for that skull and crossbones thing — it used to be the flag of pirates, mark gravesites and still has some meaning among Freemasons and Yalies. It does connote poison, which no one who is thinking about long tern warnings at Yucca deems adequate. What they want to put in there is worse than poison and needs the kind of deterrent warning that would cause all who stumble upon it to run away. And since even the skull and crossbones has changed meanings over the years, you see the difficulty of crafting something that will maintain its meaning for a million years.