Posted on 09/25/2007 6:46:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
They need to start fessing up as to how much it will cost per charge. The mileage/charge is good in terms of showing that it’s comparable to internal combustion, but it’s never clear how much an electric car costs to operate.
“They need to start fessing up as to how much it will cost per charge. The mileage/charge is good in terms of showing that it’s comparable to internal combustion, but it’s never clear how much an electric car costs to operate.”
According to the History Channel, it’s the equivalent of $1.50/gallon...compared to $3.00/gallon of gas.
Of course, if we are ALL driving electric cars, the increase demand would drive the price of electricity up.
Is that THE David Bowie? The singer?
I suppose it’s patriotic to have one of these but I’m always miffed at producing this great economical vehicle and then price it to the top 10% of the populace. If they stuck the motor in something like a PT Cruiser and put a halfway reasonable price on it it would probably take off. Initial investment recovery I guess is the cause. Same thing with the Prius any fuel saving are blown in the inflated price. Still people are buying them left and right.
I thought they were announcing their new tour from the thread title.
He bears an uncanny resemblence to Ziggy Stardust.
Read the Jay Leno review piece. It’s natural for “new” technology to be high priced and therefore available to the rich only at first. Remember, when automobiles first came out in the late 19th and early 20th century, they were considered “rich men’s toys”......................
David Bowie is a pretty darn good actor, too.................
I’m using about 20 gals a week. Approx.$60.00 I just don’t see it costing thirty dollars a week to charge batteries am I all wet. Also solar battery chargers could offset some of the cost. Replacing the batteries is what I see as the big negative.
To equate that to current gas prices --- the car gets around 125-175 MPG depending on where you live and whether you want to compare it to regular or premium gasoline.
I would figure the comparison would be to premium as that is what most gas vehicles with comparable performance would use. In that case you are nearer to the 175 MPG figure.
The biggest drawback obviously is that this is a "around home" car, it cannot be taken on long trips because of the 3-4 hour recharge time. But, if you have the 100 grabnd to blow this looks like it would be one hell of a fun back anf forth to work car.
I do not know about the tesla, but I have done some calculations in the real world on the cost of charging batteries vs. gasoline.
Using the miles range of a charged battery and a cost of charging that battery, it looks like the cost to me is about the same as 85 MPG in an internal combustion engine.
In other words, an internal combustion golf cart would have to get 85 MPG or more to be cheaper than a battery operated one. I used $2.50/gallon as a figure and the electric rates here in Utah.
.....Bob
FROM WIKI:
Acting career
Bowie’s first major film role in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) earned acclaim. David’s character Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien from a planet that is dying from a lack of water. In Just a Gigolo (1979), an Anglo-German co-production directed by David Hemmings, Bowie played the lead role of a Prussian officer Paul von Pryzgodski returning from World War I who is discovered by a Baroness (Marlene Dietrich) and put into her Gigolo Stable.
In the eighties Bowie continued with film roles and also starred in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man (1980-1981). In 1982 he made a cameo appearance as himself in Christiane F., focusing on a young girl’s drug addiction. Bowie also starred in The Hunger (1983), a revisionist vampire movie with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In the film, Bowie and Deneuve are vampire lovers, with her having made him a vampire centuries ago. While she is truly ageless, he discovers to his horror that although immortal, he can still age and rapidly becomes a pathetic, monstrous husk as the film progresses. In Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), based on Laurens van der Post’s novel The Seed and the Sower, Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Another famous musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto, played the camp commandant who begins to be undermined by Celliers’ bizarre behavior. Bowie had a cameo as The Shark in Yellowbeard, a 1983 pirate comedy made by some of the members of Monty Python, and a small part as Colin the hit man in the 1985 film Into the Night. During this time Bowie was also asked to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985), but turned down the role, stating that “I didn’t want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off mountains.”[41]
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence impressed some critics but his next major film project, the rock musical Absolute Beginners (1986), was both a critical and box office disappointment. The same year he appeared in the Jim Henson cult classic, the dark fantasy Labyrinth (1986), playing Jareth, the king of the goblins. Jareth is a powerful, mysterious creature who has an antagonistic yet strangely flirtatious relationship with Sarah (Jennifer Connelly), the film’s teenage heroine. Appearing in heavy make-up and a mane-like wig, Bowie sings a variety of new songs specially composed for the film’s soundtrack. Bowie also played a sympathetic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for 1989’s Batman. Hamm recalls “David Bowie would be kind of neat because he’s very funny when he does sinister roles”. The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson.[42]
Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in The Linguini Incident (1991), and played mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). He took the small but pivotal role of Andy Warhol in Basquiat artist/director Julian Schnabel’s 1996 biopic of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat – Bowie had met Warhol and been a guest at The Factory, though their relationship was a cool one (Warhol did not appreciate Bowie’s 1971 composition, ‘Andy Warhol’, feeling that it was poking fun at him, though wrote about him in glowing terms in his diaries when they occasionally met in the 1980s). Before appearing in The Hunger, a TV horror serial based on the 1983 movie, Bowie was invited by drum and bass Godfather, Goldie to play the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth’s independent, ‘Brighton Rock’ inspired movie, ‘Everybody Loves Sunshine’ (later re-released as B.U.S.T.E.D) indicating that however some commentators may have felt about Bowie dipping into Jungle music on his album ‘Earthling’, one of the most influential figures involved in the form was interested in what Bowie had to do in the genre (also appearing on Goldie’s album, ‘Saturnz Return’ around the same time). He played the title role in Mr. Rice’s Secret (2000) in which he is the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve year old. Shortly after Mr Rice dies, the boy discovers that Mr. Rice has planned a special treasure hunt which will lead to an important secret.
In 2001, Bowie appeared as himself in the film Zoolander, volunteering himself to be a walkoff judge between Ben Stiller’s character Zoolander, and Owen Wilson’s character Hansel. The film, a comedy, pays homage to Bowie’s legacy as a fashion pioneer in allowing him this role. Bowie portrayed Nikola Tesla alongside Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige (2006), directed by Christopher Nolan. It follows the bitter competition between two magicians around the turn of the century. Bowie has voice-acted in the animated movie Arthur and the Minimoys (or Arthur and the Invisibles in the US); his role in the film is the villain, Maltazard. In a 2006 episode of Extras, appearing as himself, he (in the context of the show) improvised and sung a song mocking the main character, played by Ricky Gervais. He will lend his voice to a character in the upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants episode titled Atlantis SquarePants as “Royal Highness”.
Further information: David Bowie filmography
What the real world range, though? At 70 mph? In cut and run traffic?
What’s the range after a few 4 second runs to 60?
How much slower does it get on successive runs?
We need a real test of the thing.
Well, since it’s so expensive, I guess we don’t.
A gallon of gasoline contains about 135,000 BTUs. A KWH contains about 3400 BTUs and costs about a dime. Thus, there are about 4 bucks worth of electrical energy in the energy in a gallon of gasoline. The Tesla will be somewhat more efficient that a gasoline vehicle, but certainly not excessively more efficient. Since electricity costs more than gasoline, but the electric car is more efficient, figure they offset each other, and the operating costs will be a push.
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