JMS

Dude.. Gretchen was Miss America in 1989. I heard Fox hired an outside legal group to conduct an investigation thinking it would turn up nothing. They came back with six or seven women who claimed they were harassed. Including Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly is being marketed as the future of the network. Her ratings are just under Bill O'reilly's but her upside is seen to be higher. That put the nail in the coffin. So now he'll get a nice huge severance package (40 million) and all the ladies are free to sue... One must wonder how long this has been going on, cause Roger Ails has been a GOP insider for decades. He's credited along with Lee A****er for getting George Bush Sr's come from behind victory over Dukakus in 1988. First clue might be that most of the two dozen women who work at fox on air all look like clones of each other. Bleached blond, big hair... For years I couldn't tell them apart. They all looked alike to me and sounded alike. Megan Kelly was the first one who ever impressed me and that was just recently when she hosted the Republican Presidential Debates. I thought she asked hard questions to everybody and really was probable the best debate host I've seen.

Yeah that's not really the case. the peaks on the electric grid is during the day when folks are using their aircondistionaers and going about their business. There is huge spare capacity in the evening when an electric car would be charging.. The other cool thing about this when you buy an electric car, or you sell 200,000 of them; you are creating huge storage capacity on the power grid which didn't exist before and will really help potentially with brown outs. Also gasoline prices are at like 10 year lows right now. It's what roughly $2. a gallon roughly. That's still about 1/20th the cost of the electrical energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. IT's just way more efficient to create electricity than gasoline and always has been. The problem was we didn't have efficient ways to store electricity before, nor convert electricity to genetic energy.

I think electric cars are better if they are better cars.. And at least according to road and track; Tesla's cars are the best cars they've ever reviewed.. not the best electric cars.. the best cars. That doesn't necessarily make it so for every consumer.. but I do think today, unlike yesterday, every consumer should take a hard look and consider the electric option before deciding on the best solution for themselves. I think having that option along with all the innovation occurring in the auto industry largely due to electric and hybrid cars is something everybody can appreciate even folks who decide gasoline for whatever reason still makes the most sense for them.

Heard an interview on the BBC with Musk maybe six months ago. Musk was saying that in the next six or seven years most cars on the road will be self driving. The BBC's car critic was incredulous. He was openly mocking Musk. How can that be, not one major auto manufactures is even planning for that option today... Never going to happen, he says.. GM just purchased a company which specializes in self driving, and of coarse Musk's model 3 with 150,000 orders is also auto driving. It's pretty cool. Friday we have Saudi Arabi talking about the end of the oil industry and their plans for such.. it's amazing.

It's another interim stage.. I read somewhere that it costs Tesla more money today to build the model 3 than he's proposing selling it for. Why would he do this.. Musk is counting on what has become about 150,000 orders for this new car. He's counting on being able to scale up and significantly reduce the costs of building these cars.... His stated goal is to create a no compromise electric car for everyday people. The model 3 is his first go at it and 35k with a 10 k rebate is his just the third price point. Musk has been aiming at this ever since he introduced his first $120k car. As for the service complaint. Look do you think when the model T first was introduced that there were enough service stations? It's true that these cars don't require the same or as significant maintenance as gasoline cars, It's also true that diagnoses and some procedures can be done online. If the car needs to go into the shop, and their are tens of thousands or a 100 thousand on the road, folks will step up to service them. Just because that infrastructure isn't their today doesn't mean it won't be there. That's not an argument to not entertain this new car, which is a pretty exciting.

I heard musk talking about that a year ago or so. Just googled it. Looks like they were toying with the idea but decided against it. No battery exchanges. So they don't need oil changes, air filter changes, bass filter changes, tune ups ( no spark plugs).. The breaks have some sort of genetic energy recapture utility which assists in breaking... There are a couple of dozen routine procedures which can be performed as well as diagnoses online.. What occurs in the routine matenance and where are they performed.. Does Tyson's even have a "shop"... the store is in the middle of the shopping mall? Where is the "shop", I'd like to check it out. The battery life seems to be a weakness.. guaranteed or rated or however they said it, for only 1000 fully cycle charges and a 200 mile range limit. The batteries are only going to last for what 4 years... A nice Gasoline car I can put 200k on them over more than a decade. Tesla's have that. IT's very noticeable too... take your foot off the power and they begin to slow down pretty fast without applying any breaks, and the breaks do recapture the genetic energy and charge the battery with it.

I need to learn more about the 3 series. Need to make sure I can fit in it. Order today.. take delivery in 2 years. Not sure I can wait. The S series I drove had better range and acceleration. Frankly had more acceleration than I'll use.. Still need to better understand the differences between the 3 series and the S and X series.

anybody can do tires, no need to go to a tesla dealership for that. The tesla's have a power recovery breaking system which adds life to the brakes. It's not a disk or pad breaking system which requires replacing. They don't coast. The moment you take your foot off the gas/power the cars decelerate and the kenetic energy is recovered and used to recharge the battery.. So not sure they need break jobs as often either. I've never had my suspension serviced on a car.

So right now the only time the car can auto drive ( without a driver onboard ) is when it's on private property... like your property.. pulling out of your drive way.. That's the car driving itself without anybody in it or watching it. ideally responding to your telephone command. Tesla is trying to get that "private property" ability to be expanded to shopping malls, restaurants etc in various areas.. Now as for a different example of pulling out of tight parking spaces, again when you aren't in the car.. In this case you are directly controlling that with the car fob. you hit a button and the car drives forward. The car is smart enough not to hit anything, or anybody; but you should wait until no other car is oncoming so no other car hit's your car... In this example, I was standing in front and to the side of the parked car.. Waited until no oncoming car there.. I hit the button.. The car immediately slides forward slowly out of the parking space. There is no engine to start, it's effectively instant power, no sound.. The tesla employee steps in front of the moving car, blocking it.. without my doing anything the car stops in front of him. As for the auto driving capability while commuting, etc when you are riding on board... That's not the same as self driving.. It's more like a sophisticated cruze control than an auto pilot. The car is driving itself but you are the responsible driver as far as the law is concerned.. meaning you are monitoring everything the car is doing. Like cruze control if you touch the gas or the brake your commands override the cars.. That's also true when you move the steering wheel. Now having said that I drove about 20 minutes on the beltway in heavy traffic without overruling the car once. The car slowed down, speed up, and even changed lanes all by itself. When the speed limit changed the car informed me by changing a display which holds the current speed limit, but I would have had to adjust the default speed myself if I wanted it to go slower or faster; the car did not do that automatically. I drove it.. or had the auto drive drive it off the beltway too.. Did great.. although it doesn't do traffic lights. You have to do those all by yourself.. So the auto drive feature is best used on the highway, not on roads with traffic lights etc.. although it did a serviceable job on the secondary roads. Didn't hit anybody, and when folks cut me off, the car slowed to keep good spacing between it and the car in front. When people turned in front of me the car slowed and than accelerated all by itself back up to it's default speed. You aren't going to be texting or reading the newspaper when you auto drive.. you have to be fully alert.. So it's not exactly an auto pilot.. more like a sophisticated cruze control with steering.

Yeah but they've kind of changed the entire metaphor of driving.. There are so many cool useful features. Like using your phone to tell your car to heat itself up or cool itself down so you're comfortable when you get into it. Like telling your care to pull out of the parking spot so you don't have to ding the car next to you when you get into it, that's in there now... you know cadalac's auto parallel parks.. this thing has that, and back in park, and normal park.. The Tesla sales guy said the next package they were working on was to have the car self valet itself. you would still have to pull up near the parking spot, let's say at a restaurant.. But when it's time to leave you could have the car pick you up at the front of the restaurant all by itself.. That's supposed to be a future online patch just like the auto driving was. That would come in handy at the Skins game.. Today they have an ap which you can tell the car to heat itself up, open the garage door, pull out onto your driveway and wait for you... Which was pretty cool to see.. Oh and the integration with your phone is cool as hell too... coarse you have access to all your songs, and hands free phone, and contacts browsing.. and your calendar, streaming music. The car has a large built in tablet on the dash which gives you full access to a lot of your phone's features as well as it's own built in features. Like being able to change your car's performance from commuting mode, to performance mode, to ludicrous performance mode..

Yeah in theory. Home full charge is 4 hours. Full charge at rapid charge station is 1 hour. That's going from dead battery to 300 miles. Charge at tesla rapid charge station is free. Now if you don't have an hour to hang around you can have the dead bateries swapped out for the cost of a tank of gas. 30 - 40$. 2-4 minutes. That's what tesla was saying over a year ago.Now don't know how that effects the 1000 full charge limitation which would give you 4 years if your commute were like mine near the top range of the car. Most people the salesman said would not use 1 full charge cycle a day but only part of one. Still limiting though.

. My understanding is at the automated rapid charging stations battery swaps were also automated. These batteries are very expensive. you aren't going to have a spare set in your garage. Besides there is no need. Also the testa sales guy told me the power plant for these cars is only rated for 1000 full charges. Partial charge isn't the same as a full charge he said. But that still sounds pretty limiting.

I hear what you are saying but I don't think you are getting it. These cars don't get oil changes or brought to the dealer for a routine tune up. When you need a tune up or something isn't working right or even when they installed the auto driving function; all that is done remotely. You call up tesla and while your on the phone the tech logs into your car and can fix adjust many of the cars routine maintenance. If it has to go into the shop, like a wreck. They come and pick up the car. So yes tesla does everything and your right that's an issue, it's also true there is less to do, and much of that can be done remotely. Battery changes for the x and s can be done automated at the rapid charging stations tesla stated over a year ago. Don't know about the model 3 yet.

Battery does not have to be professionally installed at least for S and X models. At the rapid charging stations it's an automated procedure. But they are supposed to be pretty expensive like 10k ish. Basically you are talking about trying to keep an extra tank of gas around. Not practical or necessary. If you need more range than the 200 miles base package buy a larger package. The S and X models could go rarther than 300 miles put charge

I didn't realize they were that cheap.. I would just say, based upon driving the S series, Tesler electric vehicles aren't compromise cars. They are very nice no compromise cars. There really isn't a comparison between them and a Prius. I'm a tall guy, 6'6"... I couldn't possible fit in a Prius.. I did fit in the model S.. although it was tight and kinda awkward before I fully adjusted the seat.. Heard the model X was roomier, plan to test drive that in the coming weeks. Heard the model 3 is for 5 people, not sure about the leg room there yet. Yeah not really... They do have the battery exchange program so if you are in a hurry and don't want to wait for the charge you can pay about the same price you would pay for a tank of gas and get new charged batteries. Tester does have rapid charging stations they've built all over the country... 3 in the DC area, about 30 between DC and Boston, eye balling it. The map and directions to these centers is built into the car mapping system. But really this car is supposed to be charged at your home. You can buy an automated charge system which will auto plug your car in when you park it. else you plug it in yourself.. and unless you commute more than 200-300 miles a day... you never have to worry about gas or charge again... You rely on the rapid charging stations if you are taking a road trip, generally. Here is a map of all the charging stations Tesla has today... They've got a boat load of them. https://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82,-124.39?search=destination%20charger&name=usa