Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Friday, November 22. 2013

Making It Up as They Go Along?


Tesla electric cars look pretty cool.  The owners of a Tesla (assuming it's an owner whose car didn't catch fire) love their cars and evangelize them.


I'm not sure I'm a Tesla guy.  Nothing against the technology, but they are expensive to buy and maintain.  They take too long to 'refuel'.


Regardless, these are cars that more or less sell themselves.  So why in the world do they need to engage in false advertising and hyperbole?  My father, a surgeon, never advertised even after the law was changed and he was allowed to.  Why, I asked?  His response was that good product and good service sells itself.  His business was always strong.  Sometimes, however, it pays to advertise if your product is very good.  But it doesn't pay to create your own standards when you do it.



Posted by Bulldog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 16:55 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I do not want one.

Wonder how they are on snow and ice. And off-road to a duck blind or a trout stream.
#1 BD on 2013-11-22 17:30 (Reply)
I had no idea what u said and i still dont
#2 W. C. Taqiyya on 2013-11-22 21:10 (Reply)
There is true genius in the engineering of this car.
The two-seater is silent and swift. The four/five seater is amazing for a family car. If you buy one, you will not want another type of car.
#3 ns on 2013-11-22 21:41 (Reply)
You must be joking. Silent and swift? A performance car is driven by an internal combustion engine twisting at 6 grand plus. It is straining, howling, mechanical busy-ness that is heard and felt. THAT moves the soul. This thing is a chrome plated golf car for rich folks who fancy a drive in the country lane. Geez, a Fiat 500 will beat this thing in a 2000 mile race. What a joke!
#4 Clint on 2013-11-22 21:56 (Reply)
If I could afford it, I'd buy one. The review magazines generally give them very high marks. The fire business is way over stated compared with gas-powered car problems. And they're just cool. 250+ miles on a charge, very quick, a full sized car that is much sleeker in person than it looks in the picture - just the thing to get me to the golf course and back. I also suspect the technology is a dead end. There is still too much gas and natural gas to make coal powered cars like these economically viable. Too bad, because to build Tesla 101 this good is an amazing feat.
#5 Colorado on 2013-11-23 01:10 (Reply)
Actually, a friend of mine made the same assertion about fires and internal combustion engines, then he looked it up.

Given the number of Teslas on the road, and the number which have caught fire over a 5 week period, if you extrapolate the %, Teslas are more likely to catch fire than an IC engine, as long as you exclude the arson portion of the IC calculation.

It's not a huge % difference, but enough to consider if you're paying that much for a car, because higher-priced IC autos have very low 'caught fire' statistics (they are much safer in that regard).

Teslas ARE very safe. I wasn't suggesting they aren't. They are also terrific technology. The article I link to, however, shows them to be standard sleazebags when they market their autos. Which should be unnecessary.

I don't want one, as I pointed out. I like them, though.

I think the technology is cutting edge (for now), though I suspect fuel cells will blow the Tesla away in the long run. Elon Musk had a recent rant against the fuel cell, which says to me it may be time to look into them. He's a smart guy, he should know better.
#5.1 Bulldog on 2013-11-23 08:17 (Reply)
Sure, if you have got the bucks to drop on a hobby car that you never intend to drive for distance in inclement weather, no problem. For practical use, when you need to get from A to B in zero temperatures, a cheap used gas vehicle will reliably get you further faster.

And it's not like Teslas are green vehicles. None of the new electric vehicles are green vehicles when the green accounting takes in all the details of construction and material.

If I won one of these cars in a lottery, I'd probably keep it for short commutes, at least for a couple of years. If I just wanted a bit more fun, I'd buy a 4-wheel drive SUV that would be better suited to the unpaved back roads in the surrounding mountains.
#5.2 chuck on 2013-11-23 09:13 (Reply)
All of the alternatives to our current mix of energy are scams. Wind, solar, ethanol, hybrid cars, etc. Just like the alternatives to science based medicine they are scams. The sole purpose of all these scams is to extract billons from the public coffers. It will continue until enough voters object.
#6 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-11-23 12:42 (Reply)
No argument from me on any of that. However, I have looked into geothermal, and that's actually quite a good investment. The problem, of course, is that it's an upfront payment which has to be amortized over about 10-15 year period.

Since most people don't stay in their homes that long, it doesn't look like a good investment.

It is, though, since you actually add $10,000 in value to your home for each reduction of $1,000 per year saved in utility costs. Technically, geothermal can repay the investment in about 5-6 years.

That depends on where you live, of course. Works quite well here in NJ.

Wind and solar are undoubtedly bad investments here in the NJ region. I've seen them pile up savings in some more hospitable regions, though. If I lived in the southwest, solar wouldn't be a bad investment.
#6.1 Bulldog on 2013-11-23 13:55 (Reply)
There is a city not far from me where a lot of homes use geothermal heat so apparently it does work. One electric utility that I worked for investigated it for generating commercial power. The problem is the water contains high corrosive chemicals so the cost is excessive. It is feasible but it has some serious drawbacks. Mostly they use it around here where it creates hot pools of water. This geothermal hot spring water seems to have some natural powers. I understand it makes women take off their clothes (men too but who cares about that).
#6.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-11-23 18:13 (Reply)
I'd guess that much of the allure of the Tesla is the knowledge that you are forcing those bitter-clinger redstate rubes to subsidize your social preening via the tax giveback for buying electric.
#7 razorbacker on 2013-11-23 14:41 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.