{"id":231,"date":"2012-12-30T09:19:30","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T14:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/solar-cars-and-charging-stations-who-wouldnt.html"},"modified":"2012-12-30T09:19:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T14:19:30","slug":"solar-cars-and-charging-stations-who-wouldnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/solar-cars-and-charging-stations-who-wouldnt.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar cars and charging stations: who wouldn’t?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nTired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s\n\nmaybe “next decade”<\/a> for solar power?\n\n<\/a>\nTired of Georgia Power’s Bowers\n\ntrying to push solar off for fifty years?<\/a>\nLet’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done:\nElon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International\nSpace Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.\n<\/p>\n

\nCarl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012,\n\nElon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nWhen he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously\nobdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While\nindustry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering\nwith electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would\ndesign and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel\nhundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the\nstreets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more\n\n<\/a>\nfunctional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June.\nIt’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old\ngasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300\nmiles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds,\nslows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has\nroom for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its\nbattery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you\ncharged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a\nweek are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont,\nCalifornia, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd since that story:\n\n\n\n2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S;\nShocking Winner: Proof Positive that America Can Still Make (Great) Things<\/a>\nby Angus MacKenzie, January 2013, Motor Trend.\nThat can’t hurt sales, and even before that,\nTesla already sold out its Model S for 2012 and beat analyst estimates\nfor financial performance, sending its stock price up,\nwrote\n\nSeeking Alpha 3 November 2011.<\/a>\nBack to the Smithsonian article.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nAlthough the highest-priced Model S has a range of 300 miles, it\nstill takes nine hours to recharge on a standard 240-volt electrical\nhookup, making your classic long family drive impractical, and the\nsingle largest barrier to widespread electric vehicle use. But in\n\n<\/a>\nlate October, Tesla planned to open in California the first six of a\nplanned network of 100 electrical filling stations around the U.S.,\ndubbed \u201csuperchargers,\u201d which pump electricity at 90\nkilowatts, adding 250 miles to the highest-priced Model S’s battery\n(the lowest-cost model doesn’t yet have this capability) in one\nhour. Where the filling stations can be solar powered, that means\nzero fossil fuels and zero emissions. Drive in, grab lunch, and in\n30 minutes you’re cruising with another 120-odd miles of range. With\nan electric vehicle that has a reasonable range and rapid filling\nstations available, the barriers to electric cars fall; as more\npeople get them, the laws of mass production dramatically reduce\ntheir price. Bingo; why would anyone have a car that costs 70 bucks\nto fill up and pollutes the planet?\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd it actually only takes\n\none hour at home to charge for 62 miles of range,<\/a>\nand that’s plenty for the average daily commute.\nSo if you have solar panels on your house or office,\nyou can probably recharge an electric car at home or while you work.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n<\/a>\nAs if the space and cars weren’t enough to tackle, Musk is\nsimultaneously trying to revolutionize the energy industry as well.\nHe is the biggest investor and chairman of the board of Solar City,\none of the largest suppliers of solar energy technology and a key\npiece of his aim to change not just energy consumption, but energy\nproduction.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nYou remember SolarCity, which\n\ndoes everything from financing to installation<\/a>.\nSolarCity currently operates in\nArizona,\nCalifornia,\nColorado,\nConnecticut,\nDelaware,\nHawaii,\nMaryland,\nMassachusetts,\nNew Jersey,\nNew York,\nOregon,\nPennsylvania,\nTexas,\nWashington,\nand\nWashington D.C.\nBut not in Georgia, because of that\n\n1973 Territorial Electric Service Act<\/a>\nthat Fanning and Bowers are not interested in changing\n(I’ve asked both of them in person).\nMeanwhile, SolarCity\n\nhas gone public on Nasdaq with symbol SCTY.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe\n\nsolar train is leaving the station,<\/a>\nwhile SO and Georgia Power\n\ncontinue wasting Georgia’s resources on their three-legged nuclear\nregulatory-capture stool boondoggle<\/a> on the Savannah River.\n<\/p>\n

\nWill Elon Musk singlehandedly drive a Tesla Model S to Georgia,\n\n<\/a>\ndepositing solar charging stations as he goes, while deploying\nSolarCity rooftop solar panels?\nMaybe he will; maybe he won’t (although so far he’s got quite\na track record of success).\nEven if that particular entrepeneur fails,\n\nMoore’s Law will keep driving solar prices down<\/a>\nuntil even Bowers and his uncle Fanning cry “uncle”\nand we finally get relief from that rusty 1973 law\nand solar jobs and energy independence rise in the south Georgia sun.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s maybe “next decade” for solar power? Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers trying to push solar off for fifty years? Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done: Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International Space Station, and who is […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,14,16,8,18,2,19,20,104,559,21,22,23,289,24,1019,53,449,780],"tags":[8736,8704,1020,8706,8701,8708,8699,8709,1025,1022,8702,8710,12,7,8737,8782,1024,8711,8712,8713,8758,8714,8812,108,1021,8725,971,1023,221,8767,8803,6],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-economy","category-environment","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-history","category-law","category-nuclear","category-oil","category-planning","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","category-science","category-solar","category-solarcity","category-sustainability","category-transportation","category-travel","tag-activism","tag-economy","tag-elon-musk","tag-environment","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-history","tag-ipo","tag-iss","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-paul-bowers","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy","tag-science","tag-solar","tag-solarcity","tag-southern-company","tag-spacex","tag-sustainability","tag-territorial-electric-service-act","tag-tesla-motors","tag-thomas-a-fanning","tag-transportation","tag-travel","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}