6 ms·

Tesla's dirty little secret on California's I-5

30 points by MilnerRoute 3y ago

speps 3y ago
TL;DR: a stop on I-5 has superchargers powered by a Diesel generator if there isn't enough power to power them all
- diebeforei485 3y ago
  Or had, because apparently driving a couple hours isn't expected of journalists anymore. > he doesn’t have current information about the specifics of the Harris Ranch Supercharger
ajross 3y ago
The secret is apparently that the site operates some local diesel generators at holiday rush periods to backstop the grid. Isn't that exactly what we want though? You draw the clean power to the extent practical and then burn the junk fuels only in extremis. That allows for greater uptake of EVs on the whole while minimizing impact. What's the alternative being proposed? Sell fewer EVs or limit how much they can drive over holiday weekends? Who is that helping?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- api 3y ago
  According to this crowd the alternative is probably to pretend bikes and trains can supply all transit needs and ignore the existence of rural and suburban areas. Everyone just has to move into transit accessible cities. Of course that would require building massive amounts of urban housing that these same people would protest because it would “destroy the character of the neighborhood.” There’s a certain mentality that thinks everything is wrong and horrible and any proposed solution is suspect unless it demands onerous sacrifice or doesn’t work. On the left it’s the degrowth people. On the right it’s the trads. God help us when those two groups figure out they’re actually on the same side. (PS I think trains are great and we should build more of them. Same with urban housing. But trains can’t solve the entire problem. EVs are absolutely required to decarbonize as not everyone wants or is able to live in a dense city.)
  - throwaway128128 3y ago
    "This crowd" usually suggests revisiting the US cultural default of living in car-dependent suburbs and relying on cars for everything.
    - api 3y ago
      That’s fine. We could cut probably 30-50% off our car use that way provided we could completely overrule NIMBYs and force massive urban development. That would leave the other 50-70% of the country.
    - lsaferite 3y ago
      I feel like that was covered by the "Everyone just has to move into transit accessible cities" statement.
    - Aloha 3y ago
      Before that, we had horses or donkeys to get around, as far as I can tell owning a household or personal beast of burden was about as common as personal or household car ownership is now. People act like cars created a new paradigm, and they didn't - they extended and improved an old one.
      - kmeisthax 3y ago
        In rural areas, yes, if you had the money. In cities walking, trains, and omnibuses were just as common. Suburbs didn't exist yet - they were specifically a coinvention of cars in the same way that you can't have smartphones without the cloud.
        api 3y ago
        The earliest suburbs were along rail lines but they really exploded with cars.
        Aloha 3y ago
        Proto Suburbs did exist, sorta, but the nascent middle class was so small as to be meaningless
- lolinder 3y ago
  The other reason this is better than the status quo is where the fuel is being burned. An ICE vehicle is burning fuel 5 feet from pedestrians and 15 feet from people's homes, and since it's portable it's harder to have reliable emissions controls. Even if there were no sources of renewable energy whatsoever, an EV is at the very least using power that was produced in a power plant that can be miles away from the city center.
LeoPanthera 3y ago
This is an odd article. Just a massive Elon hit piece with little of substance. I'm certainly no fan of Elon but this is not journalism, it's just an I-hate-Elon blog. It makes the typical lazy assumption that all EV charging happens at fast chargers, which is not even close to being the case. Most people charge the majority of the time at home, and in California, approximately 60% of electricity delivered to your home comes from carbon-free sources. The site linked to from the article, "Elon Musk Today", is kind of interesting. It claims to track things that Elon said he would do, but hasn't, and sure enough there are plenty of these, but it includes things like making X "The Everything App" and starting a program to research how to convert CO2 into rocket fuel. Are they really complaining that these things haven't happened overnight? That's just petty.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Reminder that hedge funds that are short Tesla stock (and other stocks) spend many millions to PAY/sponsor people like the author to write hit pieces. Not just blogs, also enitre media companies (CNBC for example) often considered "mainstream". This is not "just" a click-bait blog post (as in: the author doesn't necesarily primarily make money off of ads: the post itself is the ad). Basically a bunch of hit pieces in exhange for cash under the pretention of journalism.
  - ratsmack 3y ago
    I've been trading stocks for a long time, and I've noticed this type of "journalism" is knee-capping a lot of companies at a higher rate than ever.
    - bboygravity 3y ago
      Here's a video of Jim Cramer (now CNBC) likely high on coke (source: my own judgement, take it with a grain of salt) basically openly admitting/bragging that this happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaPf6qXLa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaPf6qXLa8 The video is from 2006
- deleted 3y ago
darknavi 3y ago
Not a ton of substance but I do see this being expressed often: > Time and again, every Tesla owner at the Harris Ranch Supercharger had a similar story. Their car wasn’t perfect — neither is the company — but it’s the best option for now to do long-range driving, to get them from one end of the state to another, especially at the front end of a busy weekend. We have two Teslas and I really enjoy them even with their downsides. But I am _really_ excited for more brands to get a good charging experience on the road (convert to NACS in NA) and can't wait for the competition to keep on ramping. There are some awesome EVs out there hampered a lot by a lack of solid charging networks. I really want to kick Tesla's butt into gear with more competitors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
api 3y ago
Idiotic hit piece. They did this because the infrastructure wasn’t there yet. Otherwise it would make zero sense as diesel is many times more expensive than grid power. As soon as grid power is available the diesel would be shut down. Sometimes you have to do weird and seemingly silly things when you are doing something new. For some reason this reminds me of early server farms for web services in the late 1990s that had PS/2 mice hanging off the back of every server to allow them to boot properly. Silly example but shows the principle. Lots of dumb anti-EV hit pieces lately. Oil and ICE industries must be worried. Of course now lefties are piling on since Elon started huffing the same brand of glue as Tucker Carlson.
ipnon 3y ago
The dirty little secret of my F-150 is that although it does not require massive lithium mining and subsequent environmental pollution, it in fact requires the combustion of hydrocarbons thousands of times a second every time I start the engine. Needless to say I'm shocked and I am looking into alternatives.
gwright 3y ago
This is a completely predictable outcome of an energy policy that pretends that intermittent power generation is substitutable for dispatchable power generation. Also related to a distributed energy system (diesel/gasoline) vs a centralized system (electrical grid).
- panarky 3y ago
  Tesla claims they've solved both the intermittancy of renewable energy and bursty demand patterns with grid-scale solutions like Megapack. There's no excuse for running diesel generators.
  - gwright 3y ago
    Yeah no. I don't think Tesla makes that claim and if they do they are wrong. Megapack does not provide long term grid-scale energy storage that is required to remove dispachable generation from the grid. If you can't remove dispachable generation because you need it to back up the intermittent generation then you've successfully increased your cost of energy considerably because you have to build and maintain two systems. Take a look at Germany for example or I think maybe trends in Australia. You get legislate away dispachable generation as much as you want but until someone solves the energy storage problem you are just creating more problems tha you solve (unreliable and very expensive energy grid).
pkdpic 3y ago
> Hidden in plain sight across the way from the Harris Ranch Supercharger’s main stations, behind a Shell station, is a small diesel plant that has helped power Tesla’s footprint. Could have fit that in the title...

30 points by MilnerRoute 3y ago

speps 3y ago

TL;DR: a stop on I-5 has superchargers powered by a Diesel generator if there isn't enough power to power them all

diebeforei485 3y ago
Or had, because apparently driving a couple hours isn't expected of journalists anymore. > he doesn’t have current information about the specifics of the Harris Ranch Supercharger

ajross 3y ago

The secret is apparently that the site operates some local diesel generators at holiday rush periods to backstop the grid. Isn't that exactly what we want though? You draw the clean power to the extent practical and then burn the junk fuels only in extremis. That allows for greater uptake of EVs on the whole while minimizing impact. What's the alternative being proposed? Sell fewer EVs or limit how much they can drive over holiday weekends? Who is that helping?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
api 3y ago
According to this crowd the alternative is probably to pretend bikes and trains can supply all transit needs and ignore the existence of rural and suburban areas. Everyone just has to move into transit accessible cities. Of course that would require building massive amounts of urban housing that these same people would protest because it would “destroy the character of the neighborhood.” There’s a certain mentality that thinks everything is wrong and horrible and any proposed solution is suspect unless it demands onerous sacrifice or doesn’t work. On the left it’s the degrowth people. On the right it’s the trads. God help us when those two groups figure out they’re actually on the same side. (PS I think trains are great and we should build more of them. Same with urban housing. But trains can’t solve the entire problem. EVs are absolutely required to decarbonize as not everyone wants or is able to live in a dense city.)
- throwaway128128 3y ago
  "This crowd" usually suggests revisiting the US cultural default of living in car-dependent suburbs and relying on cars for everything.
  - api 3y ago
    That’s fine. We could cut probably 30-50% off our car use that way provided we could completely overrule NIMBYs and force massive urban development. That would leave the other 50-70% of the country.
  - lsaferite 3y ago
    I feel like that was covered by the "Everyone just has to move into transit accessible cities" statement.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    Before that, we had horses or donkeys to get around, as far as I can tell owning a household or personal beast of burden was about as common as personal or household car ownership is now. People act like cars created a new paradigm, and they didn't - they extended and improved an old one.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      In rural areas, yes, if you had the money. In cities walking, trains, and omnibuses were just as common. Suburbs didn't exist yet - they were specifically a coinvention of cars in the same way that you can't have smartphones without the cloud.
      - api 3y ago
        The earliest suburbs were along rail lines but they really exploded with cars.
      - Aloha 3y ago
        Proto Suburbs did exist, sorta, but the nascent middle class was so small as to be meaningless
lolinder 3y ago
The other reason this is better than the status quo is where the fuel is being burned. An ICE vehicle is burning fuel 5 feet from pedestrians and 15 feet from people's homes, and since it's portable it's harder to have reliable emissions controls. Even if there were no sources of renewable energy whatsoever, an EV is at the very least using power that was produced in a power plant that can be miles away from the city center.

LeoPanthera 3y ago

This is an odd article. Just a massive Elon hit piece with little of substance. I'm certainly no fan of Elon but this is not journalism, it's just an I-hate-Elon blog. It makes the typical lazy assumption that all EV charging happens at fast chargers, which is not even close to being the case. Most people charge the majority of the time at home, and in California, approximately 60% of electricity delivered to your home comes from carbon-free sources. The site linked to from the article, "Elon Musk Today", is kind of interesting. It claims to track things that Elon said he would do, but hasn't, and sure enough there are plenty of these, but it includes things like making X "The Everything App" and starting a program to research how to convert CO2 into rocket fuel. Are they really complaining that these things haven't happened overnight? That's just petty.

bboygravity 3y ago
Reminder that hedge funds that are short Tesla stock (and other stocks) spend many millions to PAY/sponsor people like the author to write hit pieces. Not just blogs, also enitre media companies (CNBC for example) often considered "mainstream". This is not "just" a click-bait blog post (as in: the author doesn't necesarily primarily make money off of ads: the post itself is the ad). Basically a bunch of hit pieces in exhange for cash under the pretention of journalism.
- ratsmack 3y ago
  I've been trading stocks for a long time, and I've noticed this type of "journalism" is knee-capping a lot of companies at a higher rate than ever.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    Here's a video of Jim Cramer (now CNBC) likely high on coke (source: my own judgement, take it with a grain of salt) basically openly admitting/bragging that this happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaPf6qXLa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaPf6qXLa8 The video is from 2006
deleted 3y ago

darknavi 3y ago

Not a ton of substance but I do see this being expressed often: > Time and again, every Tesla owner at the Harris Ranch Supercharger had a similar story. Their car wasn’t perfect — neither is the company — but it’s the best option for now to do long-range driving, to get them from one end of the state to another, especially at the front end of a busy weekend. We have two Teslas and I really enjoy them even with their downsides. But I am _really_ excited for more brands to get a good charging experience on the road (convert to NACS in NA) and can't wait for the competition to keep on ramping. There are some awesome EVs out there hampered a lot by a lack of solid charging networks. I really want to kick Tesla's butt into gear with more competitors.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

api 3y ago

Idiotic hit piece. They did this because the infrastructure wasn’t there yet. Otherwise it would make zero sense as diesel is many times more expensive than grid power. As soon as grid power is available the diesel would be shut down. Sometimes you have to do weird and seemingly silly things when you are doing something new. For some reason this reminds me of early server farms for web services in the late 1990s that had PS/2 mice hanging off the back of every server to allow them to boot properly. Silly example but shows the principle. Lots of dumb anti-EV hit pieces lately. Oil and ICE industries must be worried. Of course now lefties are piling on since Elon started huffing the same brand of glue as Tucker Carlson.

ipnon 3y ago

The dirty little secret of my F-150 is that although it does not require massive lithium mining and subsequent environmental pollution, it in fact requires the combustion of hydrocarbons thousands of times a second every time I start the engine. Needless to say I'm shocked and I am looking into alternatives.

gwright 3y ago

This is a completely predictable outcome of an energy policy that pretends that intermittent power generation is substitutable for dispatchable power generation. Also related to a distributed energy system (diesel/gasoline) vs a centralized system (electrical grid).

panarky 3y ago
Tesla claims they've solved both the intermittancy of renewable energy and bursty demand patterns with grid-scale solutions like Megapack. There's no excuse for running diesel generators.
- gwright 3y ago
  Yeah no. I don't think Tesla makes that claim and if they do they are wrong. Megapack does not provide long term grid-scale energy storage that is required to remove dispachable generation from the grid. If you can't remove dispachable generation because you need it to back up the intermittent generation then you've successfully increased your cost of energy considerably because you have to build and maintain two systems. Take a look at Germany for example or I think maybe trends in Australia. You get legislate away dispachable generation as much as you want but until someone solves the energy storage problem you are just creating more problems tha you solve (unreliable and very expensive energy grid).

pkdpic 3y ago

> Hidden in plain sight across the way from the Harris Ranch Supercharger’s main stations, behind a Shell station, is a small diesel plant that has helped power Tesla’s footprint. Could have fit that in the title...