CA built Tesla Model S is 2nd best selling luxury car in the nation.

[Dinner]

I'd not heard about that yet, but I have heard that Li-Air batteries are limited to "a few" charge/discharge cycles. The kind of stuff they may put in the fine print next to its awesome energy capacity.

Yeah, the Blomberg article said that was the snag, that they have ideas on how to improve it, but that the proof is in the doing so that's why IBM was putting disclaimers on stuff and saying it's a high risk, high reward proving their theoretical solutions actually work.

[Dinner]

Not only is it a niche market... it's a regional niche market.

Mostly it has been selling in California with the remainder going mostly to the NE, the mid-Atlantic, and the PNW. In other words, it almost perfectly matches the luxury sedan market which is what it is after all. Tesla has been pretty outspoken that they didn't want to just have the best electric car but they also wanted it to be the best luxury car, period. Just about every review has given it the highest possible score with special comment on the extremely high level of fit and finish as well as attention to detail even when compared to other luxury car brands. Obviously a lot of that (as well as the quality) goes to Toyota's help but Tesla itself has proven they also have been very concerned about it and, so far, they have been able to deliver.

[Dinner]

That car is not beautiful. It's not ugly, either.

I have to disagree. It's the best looking thing since a Jaguar E type IMHO.

[Sava]

just.... shut up oerdin
i hate fanboiz

[Dinner]

I'm hardly a fanboy though I do recognize a nice looking car when I see one.

[regexcellent]

Mostly it has been selling in California with the remainder going mostly to the NE, the mid-Atlantic, and the PNW. In other words, it almost perfectly matches the luxury sedan market which is what it is after all.

Oh for ****'s sake, are you saying people don't buy luxury sedans in the South and Midwest?

[Dinner]

We're talking biggest markets here, dimwit.

[regexcellent]

We're talking biggest markets here, dimwit.

So, Texas, Florida, and Illinois, numbers 2, 4, and 5 (soon to be 2, 3, and 5) most populous states, aren't big markets? The South is the most heavily populated region of the US, too.

[Asher]

People in the south only buy pickup trucks.

[Felch]

I wonder what you guys think of the nitrogen power concept in this Economist article.

A growing body of opinion seems to think liquid air is the answer (or, more specifically, the nitrogen component that makes up 78% of air). It is not exactly a new idea. Air was first liquefied in 1883, using essentially the same process as today—ie, compressing it to 200 atmospheres, cooling it to -190ºC, and then letting it suddenly expand and condense. The process turns 1,000 litres of transparent gas into 1.4 litres of light blue liquid.

As long as its storage container is well insulated, liquid air can be kept at atmospheric pressure for long periods. But on exposure to room temperature, it will instantly boil and revert back to its gaseous state. In the process, it expands 700-fold—providing the wherewithal to operate a piston engine or a turbine.

Liquid nitrogen does an even better job. Being considerably denser than liquid air, it can store more energy per unit volume, allowing cars to travel further on a tankful of the stuff. Weight for weight, liquid nitrogen packs much the same energy as the lithium-ion batteries used in laptops, mobile phones and electric cars. In terms of performance and range, then, a nitrogen vehicle is similar to an electric vehicle rather than a conventional one.

The big difference is that a liquid-nitrogen car is likely to be considerably cheaper to build than an electric vehicle. For one thing, its engine does not have to cope with high temperatures—and could therefore be fabricated out of cheap alloys or even plastics.

For another, because it needs no bulky traction batteries, it would be lighter and cheaper still than an electric vehicle. At present, lithium-ion battery packs for electric vehicles cost between $500 and $600 a kilowatt-hour. The Nissan Leaf has 24 kilowatt-hours of capacity. At around $13,200, the batteries account for more than a third of the car’s $35,200 basic price. A nitrogen car with comparable range and performance could therefore sell for little more than half the price of an electric car.

A third advantage is that liquid nitrogen is a by-product of the industrial process for making liquid oxygen. Because there is four times as much nitrogen as oxygen in air, there is inevitably a glut of the stuff—so much so, liquid nitrogen sells in America for a tenth of the price of milk.

Finally, a breakthrough in engine design has made liquid nitrogen an even more attractive alternative than the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars. An invention made by an independent British engineer called Peter Dearman dispenses with the costly heat exchanger that is needed to vaporise the liquid nitrogen quickly. Instead, a small amount of water and anti-freeze (eg, methanol) is injected into the cylinder just as the liquid nitrogen is drawn in, causing it to boil and expand rapidly—thereby forcing the piston down inside the the cylinder. “Without that,” says Mr Dearman, “you had to have a multi-stage engine, which is cumbersome, inefficient and expensive.”

TLDR version: Liquid nitrogen is cheap, it can be practically carried in a fuel tank, and it can drive a piston by boiling. It sounds exciting, but I think it also sounds like a million other things that were supposed to change the world.

[Sava]

I'm hardly a fanboy

coulda fooled me

and you're just another fake liberal environmentalist

[Dinner]

When did I ever claim to be an environmentalist?

[Sava]

When did I ever claim to be an environmentalist?

oh, so you just like to bash republicans
fair enough

[KrazyHorse]

Oerdin, your title is ridiculous. It is only second highest in the large luxury class. Notably, it is far cheaper than the cars it beat out, in part because of the substantial government subsidy.

[KrazyHorse]

Also notably, the car that beat it in that class (the xts) is cheaper still...sorry, but a 45k xts and an 80k s class are not after the same market. Making a units comparison between the two is ridiculous.