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Page added on April 8, 2016
The Tesla 3: an earth-rape for the rare metals
It’s depressing when even Jalopnik – a car site that’s supposed to be into cars – throws a bukakke party for the new Tesla 3.
Which is a car in the same way that this is an airplane.
Elon Musk’s latest four-wheeled exercise in rent-seeking will reportedly be “sold” (fundamentally dishonest word; I’ll explain) for about $35,000 to start. Which is a “deal” – sort of – when compared with the other Tesla, which has a starting price just under $70k.
Jalopnik writes (if it can be described as such):
“The entry-level Tesla Model 3 sedan is coming the month and it’s not just supposed to transform the future of the company, it’s supposed to transform the electric car into (sic) a bit player for the sybaritic and the techno-weirdos into a clean vehicle for the masses….”
The “writer” (sorry, I can’t help myself) then goes on to abuse the “shit talkers” (that’d be me) who “howl all day” about the electric Edsel’s range and recharge issues – which have not been solved.
As per usual, this article – pretty much all the articles – parrot Tesla’s press kit talking points about the car’s potential range, which is “up to” 300 miles. Well, sure. You might also earn “up to” $100,000 a month working from home, using our multi-level marketing scam. Just call 1-800-BULLSHIT and sign up now.
It amazes that so many people still fall for the “up to” schtick.
Especially here.
The editorial laziness, the engineering ignorance – or the bought-and-paid-for shilling is truly spectacular.
Ok, sure. The car might indeed go “up to” 300 miles… if you live in a nice warm place like southern California…. if you drive on mostly flat roads and like a Clover (gimpy acceleration, stick to within a few MPH of the speed limit) and avoid using electrically powered accessories like the headlights and heater and air conditioning.
Then, maybe.
Of course, a $5,000 used Corolla can do all that stuff, too. 
More, actually.
Granted, it’s not sexy. But it’s also not subsidized.
If, however, you live in a place that has hills … or gets cold… or you like to use the heat and headlights… or you drive your $35,000 to start “luxury performance” electric car in an un-Clover manner… well, your mileage will vary.
But that’s just me “shit talking” again.
Because I am shilling for Big Oil, cannot embrace new technology (which is actually very old technology).
Well, except that the Jalopnik flak inadvertently agrees with me. He writes:
“One thing odd tick (sic) we did encounter, however, is what happens to a Tesla battery if you leave it unplugged overnight… on a cold night, you can see a drop of up to 40 miles from where you left it.”
So, you’ve got a $35,000 car that loses 40 miles of range just because you left it sitting. Isn’t that like having an old gas-engined jalopy with a pinhole leak in its gas tank? Except, of course, you didn’t have to spend $35,000 on the leaky jalopy. And even if the tank leaks dry, you can still pour in a 5 gallon jug of gas in about 5 minutes or less.
Which brings me to the Other Thing:
The mass market acceptance of the new Tesla will depend on a whole new rent-seeking project:
The establishment of a network of Tesla “supercharger” fast-charging stations all over the country.
Guess who’s gonna pay for that, too?
And I guess it’s just more “shit-talking” on my part to point out the hilarity of describing as “fast” a recharge time that’s still “about half an hour or so.”
I’m the “shit talker” for boggling at the idea that people are going to be happy about waiting around for half an hour to forty-five minutes to get back on the road again?
We’re talking waits-to-get-going that are 150 times the typical 5 minute refuel with a gas-engined car. And which you’ll have to do more often because the Tesla doesn’t go nearly as far on a full charge as a gas-engined car goes on a full tank. (I’m a car journalist; the car companies send me a new car to test drive each week. But only rarely an electric car. Why? Because they can’t make the 250 mile trip in a day, unless they’re piggybacked down here on a flatbed.)
But then, the Tesla is “clean” and “green.”
Yeah, sure. If you don’t count the elsewhere emissions – including that dread gas, C02 – emanating from the utility plants that generate the electricity the Tesla runs on. Or the earth-rape for the rare metals needed for the cars’ battery packs, not to mention the emissions produced manufacturing them.
The one potentially positive aspect of this story is that if Elon Musk can line up enough rich suckers to buy the “inexpensive” Model 3, it will be slightly harder for him to dig his hands into your pockets and mine (via Uncle) to “help” him – via subsidies – manufacture his crony capitalist conveyances.
But that’s about as likely to happen as the Chevy Volt becoming a best-seller.
And in defense of the Volt, it could at least make a 400 mile road trip without 45 minute pit stops to recharge every 150 miles or so. Because it carried along a portable gas-fired generator (an internal combustion engine), which made it a serviceable car, albeit a grossly overpriced one.
The Tesla 3 has no such lifeline. When it runs out juice, you’ve run out of luck.
Better call Uncle.
But hey – that’s just me “shit talking” again.
40 Comments on "The Tesla 3: an earth-rape for the rare metals"
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 7:49 pm
What’s a bukakke party?
Apneaman on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 7:51 pm
Eric Peters sucks cheesy cocks and I don’t give a fuck about electric cars.
Apneaman on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 7:54 pm
“What’s a bukakke party?”
http://www.xnxx.com/video82730/xmas_bukakke_cum_party
makati1 on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 8:04 pm
About those “costs” for tech…
“A recent Amnesty International report sounded the alarm on a “blood mineral” mined by Congolese children as young as seven and used in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries found in laptops, smartphones and even electric cars.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/from-apple-to-volkswagen-tech-boom-fueled-by-40000-congolese-child-miners/215364/
But Americans ignore ‘collateral damage’ if it supplies them with goodies.
Davy on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 8:26 pm
People believe this shit.
“Musk’s Reusable-Rocket Dream Comes True With Drone-Ship Landing”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-08/musk-s-reusable-rocket-dream-comes-true-with-drone-ship-landing
“Musk has said that a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the only way to enable humans to travel to and from Mars.”
Craig Ruchman on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 9:17 pm
This article makes no sense.
Compare a simple electric charging outlet to the cost of building a gas station: big heavy tanks to put underground only to have to dig them up again after they rust out after 20 years; the gas that must be hauled in by trucks that burn some of the fuel in the process; the risk of fires and explosions. The list is long.
There are far more places to charge an electric – starting with your home. The idea of being restricted to a service station is a gas mentality.
I must also point out that charging an electric saves time over filling up. Do it when you get home at night so you are ready for the next day. No more wasting time and gas looking for gas.
I’m invested with Tesla, what’s not to like?
Trurh Has A Liberal Bias on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 9:31 pm
Jalopnik did that for a Tesla 3?! That’s fucked up!!
Goat1001 on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 9:46 pm
Electric cars are no solution. The techno-industrial world is rapidly winding down, most people just don’t know it yet. Electric power grids are already under tremendous strain, are aging, contributing to massive climate change and mass extinction. The minerals required to build these types of vehicles are rare in the earth’s crust and their extraction in damaging to the environment and people’s health.
Roads and bridges are degrading right in front of our eyes. Funds are no longer available to fix them.
We are at the very end days of industrial society. The future of transportation is horses and mules for the tiny fraction of the 8 billion plus humans that survive.
Pennsyguy on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 10:03 pm
1. Collapsing civilizations get to a point when they can no longer afford complex technologies.
2. Per Tainter, et al. there comes a time when the problems caused by complex technologies can no longer be solved by more complex technologies.
makati1 on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 10:49 pm
Craig, how many Congolese children will die so you can have that piece of depreciating future techie junk called a Tesla? Oh, you don’t give a damn? They are just black kids with no future anyway? I wonder how much you would like that car if it meant your kids had to die for it? Nah. You would never consider that as possible, would you? Never say never….
Anonymous on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 11:11 pm
This makes a couple a valid criticisms, but like all car-dependent americants, cant see the forest for the trees. Complaining around range and recharge time skips over the whole issue that really dogs EV’s. EV’s leave almost every single problem cars create, unresolved, but I dont see him really getting that subtle point. What if Musks cars were powered by Dilithium crystals? Or pixie dust. What if they gave the cars away for free? Would that make the Telsa-3 ‘better’? Magic power and free cars cant solve the car problem, but better to ignore that and complain how long it takes to charge one, or their effective range as if those are the only real problems with EV’s that exist, or matter.
Musk is a so over-hyped its no longer funny. His rockets barely work, his EV’s sort of work, but are hideously expensive. And Musk and the decaying, decadent empire he resides in is NOT going to Mars, not in his rockets, nor his gov’ts, not now, not ever. His rockets have trouble making it to LEO, let alone an inhospitable planet many millions of KM away.
GregT on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 11:20 pm
“I’m invested with Tesla, what’s not to like?”
The death and destruction that be will be the ultimate result of turning our one and only planet into a for profit capitalist industrial waste land.
That’s what’s not to like.
GregT on Fri, 8th Apr 2016 11:34 pm
Anonymous,
Musk is the new God of the techno-utopians, and he is making a killing off of them. Literally.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 12:29 am
Elon Musk seems to be doing remarkable things. However, there can always be another way.
What probably pencils out better than electric cars, is fossil fuel engines of greater efficiency. Google the 5-stroke engine, or better yet, the OPOC engine. They provide far greater fuel efficiency.
However this is the USA land of the evil rich people and the stupid fat people.
Since innovation is evil and bad and cannot be allowed, these engines which could have been developed long ago, are still only prototypes.
joe on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 12:37 am
When gas powered cars won against electric cars (and steam cars) a hundred years ago the reasons given then are still valid today, for now.
One benefit i can see is that a fleet of electric cars in a city is more efficient than gas cars that burn even in idle mode, reduced pollution is also important.
But for mass transportations and long distance travel then gas is the best choice, barring any advances in rail.
Drones and internet should make many journeys unnecessary, for example meetings and package delivery. Also 3d printing will have an impact as well.
The real issues we are facing is how to manage the end of the easy oil age and the crippling effect that debt is going to have on the global economy. Climate change will give us all somthing other than peak oil to think about, though obviously one causes the other, both destroy each other, but the damage is done now.
GregT on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 1:08 am
joe,
“The real issues we are facing is how to manage the end of the easy oil age and the crippling effect that debt is going to have on the global economy.”
The global economy is the oil age, and debt is a claim on the future of the oil age. Climate change is only one of the many consequences of our placing the economy above nature, and nature is what gives every species of plant and animal on our little blue planet life, not the economy, which is destroying all of the above.
onlooker on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 1:16 am
Exactly, Joe. The Economy is a subset of Nature. Without Nature we have no Economy. And in all circles I find that people somehow discount this possibility with the mere cavalier illusion that Nature will always be there for us. Well, think again.
GregT on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 1:28 am
Human exceptionalism onlooker. The naked ape believes that he is not only above nature, but is in control of it. Nothing could be further from reality.
makati1 on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 2:13 am
BTW: Gas powered cars did not “win” against electric in fair competition. The oily corporations bought up the electric car makers and electric trolley lines and trashed them so they could sell oil and oily products. At that point the fate of humanity was sealed. The last 100 years is proof.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 2:42 am
What’s with th African Airlines video. Gets an A for effort. The answer to all that is Boeing should imply him and give him an honorary job driving the forklift.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 2:46 am
Shitty Apple smart phone. Boeing should import him….
Everybody bows down in worshipful prayer to Apple Corp but in reality iPhone is a pile of shit. I use one, I ought to know. Just every competitor is even worse, not better.
makati1 on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 3:04 am
Go speed, there is no innovation in the Us anymore. Nor quality control. It only has to last until the next model comes out and then you throw the old one away. Everyone is conditioned to buy the newest piece of shit at outrageous prices. It’s ALL about money these days.
Davy on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 5:44 am
“Compare a simple electric charging outlet to the cost of building a gas station: big heavy tanks to put underground only to have to dig them up again after they rust out after 20 years; the gas that must be hauled in by trucks that burn some of the fuel in the process; the risk of fires and explosions. The list is long.”
Craig R, you forgot to mention the coal fired plant being fed by the coal strip mining operation in WY. OH, then there is the diesel train hauling that coal to the coal fired plant. It might be fracked gas which we know how dirty that is. Maybe NUK power and how about all those spent fuel rods. More EV BS. EV’s have a place but EV’s are no transition technology and will never substitute for the oil culture we have, not even close.
Davy on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 6:15 am
“Gas powered cars did not “win” against electric”.
It is pretty obvious electric has advantages for street cars for example but I see no evidence of advantages for electrified personal transport with EV’s except around the edges. EV’s are definitely not going to work for freight hauling except with electrified rail. So EV’s have some benefits IOW they are a niche technology. Electrified power has well known benefits and is already utilized. We have a huge built out infrastructure for oil powered transport that cannot be transitioned from in the current status quo situation. Maybe some locals or regions will manage something but transition for globalism is a dead end.
We could never replace that built out oil infrastructure physically with the challenges we face ahead. The cost benefit of that effort is not there. Electric is not cleaner until it is majority renewable and even then renewables are not as clean as they are claimed to be. The epic transition of oil to renewables is not so epic because it is a dud. It isn’t happening and won’t because the physics and the economics don’t add up. Google the numbers and see the penetration of renewables. Renewables are still low after 15 years of a huge effort. Renewables have a place in the mix but not “THE” place.
What is more logical is to make the best of what we have in a declining civilization. Where these other modern technologies can be included and help in that decline is a benefit. All the talk about a renewable age with EV’s and clean tech is just a deception. It is a deception at the societal level which is very dangerous. It is one thing for an individual to be deceived but quite another for a whole society.
Climate change is likely a done deal and the climate change preachers are wasting their time. If they want to preach then preach about the tradeoffs of maintaining fossil fuels at some levels to stave off an immediate collapse but leading to an eventual climate induced collapse or collapse modern civilization to mitigate climate change. It is a tradeoff climate preachers with death by collapse or death by collapse. This is a catch 22 existential predicament with no solutions. They both lead to collapse which is worse? You will never know until it unfolds.
Gamma999 on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 7:20 am
Yes, poor Terrified PussyRepubs crying about something else.
Sissy wets herself, might forget to plug it in. You know, another almost never-gonna-happen type of Repub problem the pussies are always worried about.
Go what Clarkson mis-test something and then take your Metamusal.
Those damn iPhones are so hard to use too.
Let’s count the “elsewhere” emissions of gas:
1) Elect idiot Dick Cheney President
2) Ignore climate change, and invade Iraq, for 4 Trillion Dollars, and then DON’T PAY FOR IT. NO WAR TAX EVER IMPOSED.
3) Then you let Exxon, and a lot of other smaller US oil companies, and Haliburton, bid to acquire those oil drilling rights.
4) They build Iraq storage facilities, improve Iraq PORTS.
5) You need to build oil storage container shipping.
6) You need US navy protection thru the Straits of Hormuz
7) Drive ship to Texas port.
8) Port Storage facilities
9) Refinery built and run, and massive electrical usage ( green wind ) to power, and massive local pollution, with oil sludge waste you can use a “fracking lub”.
10) Trucking Fleet.
11) Gas Station Fleet.
12) Labor and Depreciation.
Or,
Put up Wind and Solar in the USA, with NO POLLUTION and NO WARS.
And transfer that power thru electrical lines.
Clearly gas uses VASTLY more resources, and energy.
Kenz300 on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 8:17 am
Electric cars, bikes and mass transit are the future…..fossil fuel ICE cars are the past…………..
Think teen agers vs your grand father………………….
cell phones vs land lines…….
makati1 on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 8:42 am
Ah, the electric dreamers. So much bullshit. So few brains.
longtimber on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 9:47 am
“And transfer that power thru electrical lines.”
BAU Thinking. Much is really unnecessary with Cheap kWh’s from Distributed Generation. Solar Pv is a game changer. $$ stay Local. Only a tiny Fraction of kWh needs to be stored in Batteries in a well designed “system” which includes proper loads.
makati1 on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 10:07 am
Who makes those panels longtimber? A local company? Who mines the materials? Refines them? Machines them? Assembles them? Transports them to your neighborhood? Local? I don’t think so. and who makes the stuff that uses that electric? Local companies? LOL
Dave thompson on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 11:46 am
How is steel made? Concrete? All types of other metals and plastics? Once commodities are in place how are they assembled, maintained and transported? Where does food come from? The pesticides and fertilizers,transportation and processing? The list goes on and on. Nowhere does driving an electric car come into play, nowhere, ever. Except in the greenbrainwashing of the masses thru the multinational corporate bankers, military industrial media complex hubris.
Boat on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 2:23 pm
Besides electricity and efficiency chipping into the oil market don’t forget the growing impact of nat gas.
Dooma on Sat, 9th Apr 2016 8:32 pm
Electric cars are simply another way that the masses are being told that they can have their BAU cake and eat it too.
Sure they might work for a minority of rich people in the wealthier parts of large cites. But nowhere else.
The fact is that we should be looking at better mass transit systems. But there seems to be something “freedom robbing” about the idea of sharing transport.
The days of just jumping into a car-usually alone-and travelling to wherever, are coming to an end. And are the whole reason we have used up so many precious barrels of oil in the first place. We are going to have to completely change the way we live. Or nature will change it for us.
and that is already happening.
dooma on Sun, 10th Apr 2016 1:00 am
That aircraft video had my rolling around on the floor. I have just completed a Vans RV-10 kit plane for someone with a 300hp engine that goes like a rocket. It looks slightly different to the aircraft in the vid.
Someone needs to tell the poor fellow that he should not be using steel so much in the design. And he needs a lot more power than that if he continues to do so.
Kenz300 on Sun, 10th Apr 2016 9:07 am
The worlds biggest environmental problem is OVERPOPULATION.
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child. Having a child you can not provide for is cruel……………..
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
Poverty in the Philippines –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XldM4DtlA-Y
ennui2 on Sun, 10th Apr 2016 8:35 pm
The only bukkake party here is the boilerplate luddite hyperbole from the usual suspects who are now up in arms over the idea that happy motoring may get a few extra innings.
makati1 on Sun, 10th Apr 2016 8:50 pm
ennui, you are full of it….lol.
Davy on Mon, 11th Apr 2016 7:23 pm
Here is a nice kick to the teeth for Elon:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-11/tale-two-car-companies
Apneaman on Mon, 11th Apr 2016 9:32 pm
A fault in our design
We tend to think that technological progress is making us more resilient, but it might be making us more vulnerable
https://aeon.co/essays/technological-progress-makes-us-more-vulnerable-to-catastrophe
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