Elon Musk's New System -- Good for Boats?

[Aargau]

You're one of the bigger misinformers yes, I specifically claim that. Your primary correct claim is that battery energy density is not there is completely correct, it's not close. However, you also said:

• Article in the WSJ about Musk's new battery plans this week. Apparently the smallest "home" unit will be size size of a "small" refrigerator and priced at $24,000, fwiw.
• There's also reasoned speculation that his real purpose of selling "home" systems is to find an outlet for the batteries. Tesla sales have been underperforming, and the factory will at this rate be producing way more capacity than Tesla needs, so if they can't find a way to dispose of perhaps 50% of all production, literally dispose of it, the whole venture falls apart.
• his sales projections have had no correlation to reality.
• I'd read they were o-u-t out.
• Or the need to have a private home, which is for most people the only way to install a home charger? And, that little leash caused by not being able to go away for the weekend if you dream or need to drive 200+ miles and find a charger at the other end yet?
• They can't figure out how to sell what's already in inventory, let alone coming off the line.
• Quite the opposite! Even with the most optimistic projected sales, based on what they HAVE been able to sell not what Elon would like to sell, if that factory starts up they are going to have the world's first 20-hour work week and still be stacking the batteries up to the ceiling. His projections just haven't matched actual sales, and show no ability to reconcile the two.
• You'd need to have "swap stations" with staff and inventory, not just charging posts. And then there's another problem: I've got a new Tesla with a new battery. You swap in a battery from a 2013 Tesla. Hey, I don't want that, I came in with a NEW battery, at some point, how will I get stuck with an old dying battery instead of the one I just bought?

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and guess that you're a short seller, not a complete idiot who can't look up stories like this.

Tesla's Battery Grabbed $800 Million in Its First Week - Bloomberg Business

Tesla Model S sales reached a new record in Q1 2015 | BGR

Tesla is on track to meet all numbers it has quoted to Wall Street for both Model S and the new Model X.

The 200 mile range was the first quoted range a year ago, subsequent improvements to battery tech will bring it to 250. The first Model S battery was 40 kWh, it's subsequently up to 70 kWh for approximately 8% higher price.

The battery replacement is done by a robot. I'm sure there will be some staff as well. However, both the age and charge of the battery are measured, and there will either be a credit or a charge if you change your battery to something significantly different. It's primary design is to swap your battery out, charge your battery for you, and swap it back in when you return.

The NY Times article was heavily criticized as a hatchet piece, as was the Top Gear where they intentionally ran the car battery out so they could get a video of them pushing the car.

Again, history will determine who is right.

I am not an investor in the company's stock. However, I did choose to get the Tesla P85D over a million dollar supercar that I could only run on Laguna and Sonoma to get its full performance.

[hellosailor]

Top Gear is entertainment, not Nooze. Jeremy Clarkson has been branded a buffoon and prankster, and the show will probably be terminated as he's gotten himself terminated. No surprise there, unless it is to someone who takes that as a Automotive News show, which it never claimed to be.


"Tesla's Battery Grabbed $800 Million in Its First Week - Bloomberg Business"
Yes, well, as many sources have said for many years, some 95% of all stock buyers LOSE MONEY on the market in order for the remaining 5% to make a profit. Often a very good profit.
And your average citizen thinks that voting in favor of municipal bonds, will cost them less than paying for the same jobs (without brokerage fees and buyer interest payments) out of tax dollars. To say that a lot of people, including brokers looking to churn stocks, have invested in something only means there's a fool born every minute.


So far? Tesla is still a pyramid scheme. Nice car, but it relies on Ponzi/pyramid scheming to churn money and sell product, which has, in the kindest terms, still never been proven to be economically sustainable. Especially without the GENEROUS federal rebates they've been getting.


It will be nice if it works out, but then again, I had reservations on the Pan Am Moon Shuttle. Guaranteed reservations. From Pan Am, and they were one of the biggest and most established and successful names in the aviation business.


Elon Musk? Still not as reliable as Pan Am. I wish him luck, but I won't bet on him. He seems to gloss over too many "little" things.

[med]

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

NextGen 3.5 BSFC 0.55 & run time of 298 hours
NL 10 Kw BSFC 0.88 & run time of 104 hours
NL 20 kw BSFC 0.83 & run time of 52 hours
Yanmar BSFC 0.63 & motoring time of 140 hours

If you replaced that old mechanical Yanmar with a modern common rail electronically controlled engine, you would get fairly close to optimum BSFC over a much larger operating range - in particular also at your cruising speed.

This will typically result in about a 20% improvement in fuel consumption at typical cruising speeds with a fixed prop. You can tease out a little more efficiency by using a controllable pitch propellor (which actually has a bigger gain with a mechnically controlled diesel than with a electronic common rail diesel).

So your direct drive diesel to propellor is the most efficient.

Which is hardly surprising really.

This is exactly why all the worlds big container ships are powered with a big common rail electronically controlled single diesel engine driving a single big fixed propellor all optimised for the service speed of the vessel. Everything about a container ship is optimized for total operating cost - and fuel consumption is the biggest part of that. If a diesel electric set up was more efficient, they would be using it.

Cruise ships use diesel electric power as they can then pod the drives. This enables the ships to be very manoeverable which is an important cost saving as they can manage without tugs in their very frequent docking manoevres (container ships don't stop nearly as often).

Railway locamotives use diesel electric power in order to be able to start moving a fully loaded train. Doing that with gears and clutches is difficult. An electric motor has maximum torque at 0 speed which is exactly what is required for a train. A railway locamotive does not bother with regenerative braking as they could not store enough energy in batteries to make any significant difference to fuel consumption.

[Aargau]

Simply put, I completely agree that a full electric system is still a compromise for a diesel based backup for a sailboat, and is also inappropriate for high efficiency high volume commercial shipping, airplanes, and rocket ships. You absolutely need higher energy density for anything that contains its own fuel and has no other means of acquiring energy (for the latter two).

However, I'm also an AI/algorithm researcher. I did the routing algorithms for Streetview for Bing maps, Navteq, Google maps, and Nokia. (not Garmin). I'm in contact with Savvas Kampouridis over at MarineTraffic.com to get all publicly available AIS data to do analysis of the 90%, 95%, and 99% bars for trip distance and motoring requirements.

The topic that so many people here bring up is range anxiety. It's a real thing, whether it be an electric car or a sailboat. What I am looking to determine is what percent of people's use, and/or what percent of trips would be adequately met by a given size battery and electric propulsion system.

If you are doing an around the world trip with the race requirement that you don't get to resupply, then a regenerative system is actually better than one that uses up fuel. Conversely if you're doing Galapagos to Marquesas and stuck in a particularly wide swath of the doldrums and need to motor, you probably want to stick to a large reserve diesel system.

There are some percent of people whose requirements are so low (short trips, very little motoring, lots of time to regenerate) that could move right now to a fully electric system. There's some percent of people that if battery density doubled, could move then. There are some people who simply shouldn't move over, because they have powerboats, not sailboats, and do long enough trips that they need the highest energy density possible.

I will also be branded a sailing elitist for this next statement, but so be it. You don't need to drop sails a mile from your berth and motor in. I grew up on the east coast sailing and racing competitively and docking without any motors at all.

Even with diesel systems, there is some percent of trips you couldn't do, because you buy your tank capacity to cover most cases, but not all. What's going to be most useful is hard numbers on trip distances and engine usage across a wide aggregate population and trip database which will tell each person when they should or could move to a battery based system.

[jwcolby54]

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

to keep from drawing batteries below 50%

I think that is part of the misunderstanding. A LiFePO battery can be drawn down to 10% IIRC without any damage whatsoever. It is the big FL batteries that cannot be drawn below 50%. Or any kind of lead battery actually.

Your point still exists though. Trying to drive a big boat for 24 hours on solar is a non-starter, regardless of battery type used.

However if you want to deal with it in a "hybrid" mode where you use a diesel to charge the batteries, then when you need to motor past whatever your battery can supply, fire up the diesel. It may be possible to use a smaller diesel. And then any solar (or wind, or regenerative) simply replaces some part of the diesel used.

All electric is no panacea. And those who want or need to motor for extended periods will not do well with all electric.

[jwcolby54]

I have read every post of this thread and I must say it is amusing if nothing else. We have those who say (correctly) that folks have sailed without diesel engines for... ohhh... about 6 thousand years.

And others that say (correctly) they couldn't possibly live without their diesel engine to drive them onwards for the umpteen hours that they have no wind.

I do think that if there is an agenda then a conclusion can be manufactured to fit the agenda. That is what politics is all about after all, and there are few agendas defended as successfully as political agendas (of whatever bent).

So there ya have it. If you are on a mission from God and ya just gotta be there by 1:00 PM day after tomorrow, you pretty much need a diesel. Unless "there" is 10,000 miles away then you need a jet.

And so if you say that your logs indicate you have motored X hours and that is what you need, you have answered the agenda question and your solution. We can pretty much acknowledge that electric is not your solution.

To whoever said "when it works for everyone every time..." I would simply state that your own diesel doesn't do that, if you are in the Bahamas and need to be in Italy tomorrow. So much for "all the people all the time".

The diesel is a tool that does one specific thing very well. Run out of diesel however and it does nothing very damned well! Well, if you can extract it from the hold it would make a fine emergency anchor.

The sun is free. And intermittent. Wind is free. And intermittent. Diesel is not free. And intermittent. Beyond that, whatever works for you ... works for you eh?

[TacomaSailor]

"I do think that if there is an agenda then a conclusion can be manufactured to fit the agenda. That is what politics is all about after all, and there are few agendas defended as successfully as political agendas (of whatever bent)."

It seems to me to be an incontrovertible FACT when I state that the BSFC for a small diesel generator to deliver power to the prop is 14% better than my Yanmar but requires 3 hours run time to replace the power for one hour of motoring.

It is also an incontrovertible FACT that a 10KwH battery can only move my boat 6 NM at a practical cruising speed or into wind, waves, or tidal flow, and will be discharged to 10% of capacity, and will then need 13 KwH of energy to replace that used to move the boat.

It is an economic FACT that I would have to spend $8,000 for the 20KwH batteries to move 12 NM in two hours and would need a $4,000 generator to recharge those batteries in 6-hours.

It is a physical FACT that 20 KwH of batteries and the small generator needed to recharge them will weigh more than my Yanmar and take up far more space.

It is a physical FACT that we do not know how many recharge cycles the new batteries can experience and maintain their efficiency. It is a physical FACT that my 20-year old Yanmar has run for less than 1/3 of it's life expectancy.

It is a weather FACT that in many parts of the country, e.g. the Salish Sea, the wind does not blow a breath for days at a time and the tides run at 2 to 4-knots twice a day and therefore sailing is not an option for days at a time.

It is a physical FACT that a boat trying to move in tidal waters may need 10-horsepower just to stay still in a tidal flow.

It is a physical FACT that four 300-watt solar panels (77” x 39”) need 84 square feet of space, with no shadows or shading, on the boat. At maximum output they would need 21-hours to recharge the 20 KwH used to move my boat 12-miles. Or, if I am a real sailor, they would need 2-hours to replace the power I use to move the boat ONE nautical mile.

You can turn those FACTs into whatever agenda you think appropriate.

I installed a big solar array on our boat in June 2000 and have not used shore power for much of anything since then. I love off the grid life, we were heating our house in 1977 with only wood, but I am sceptical about the practicality of a cruising boat using electrical power for propulsion.

[jwcolby54]

I hear ya. But it is an incontrovertible FACT that before there were diesel engines we didn't have diesel engines. People sailed. As someone put it, they sailed right up to the dock. They sailed away from the dock. If there was no wind then they didn't go anywhere. They learned when and where there would be wind, and they used that to plan their trips. And sometimes they sat in the middle of the ocean at a standstill because in the end, (as is being discussed on another thread) sometimes we don't get to pick our weather.

So YOU make a choice, and YOUR choice requires a diesel. You could make a different choice to just plain not have a diesel (or other carbon based power plant).

That is not a value judgment, just an incontrovertible fact. It is definitely a FACT that if ANYONE wants to cruise under power (and you obviously do) when there is no wind then you pretty much need a diesel.

I used the term agenda. Agenda synonyms include:

schedule, program, timetable, itinerary, lineup, list, plan, to-do list;

So if my agenda is to be somewhere on a certain date, I absolutely need an engine, because I cannot depend on wind. As an example, if I have a vacation from the 1st of June to the 15th of June and I want to go sailing... then my needs are different than if, for example, I just want to live aboard and sail around to different places as the wind allows. If my agenda is to go where the wind may take me, then a solar / wind generator powered (and propelled) boat might work, since my sails will do 99% of my propulsion.

And finally, your

FACT
FACT
FACT
FACT

list makes it feel to me as if you feel attacked for your choices. I for one am not attacking your choices, simply pointing out that you are in fact making choices that require the diesel. That in no way implies that I have to make those same choices.

[TacomaSailor]

"list makes it feel to me as if you feel attacked for your choices. I for one am not attacking your choices, simply pointing out that you are in fact making choices that require the diesel. That in no way implies that I have to make those same choices."

Sorry about the perceived attack - my intent was quite the opposite. I wanted to state the facts and then, as you say, let everyone draw their own conclusions about where the facts lead them.

I love new technology, I made a very nice living helping first adopters plan for new technology, and I suspect that someday electrical propulsion power might be practical for sailboats. But, for now, my feeling is that is too expensive, restrictive, and hard to implement for a long distance cruiser.

Additionally, in some areas of the country, e.g. my home waters - the Salish Sea, it really is necessary to be able to motor with considerable power, in order to enjoy the area in less than a "time is no object" mode.

I am looking forward to some new battery charging technology that will free us from using diesel power.

[nimblemotors]

If you want to believe it won't work, you'll find reasons.
If you want it to work, you will find a way to make it work.

Diesel fuel is the cheapest way for propulsion, which is because you don't pay the true cost of the fuel, your descendants will be paying the full cost in the future. I know a sailor so cheap...he uses diesel fuel.
Your boat could never carry enough diesel fuel to go around the world without stopping, yet you still use it. Hmmm.
SolarPlanet is going around the world on all solar powered electric propulsion.

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

"I do think that if there is an agenda then a conclusion can be manufactured to fit the agenda. That is what politics is all about after all, and there are few agendas defended as successfully as political agendas (of whatever bent)."

It seems to me to be an incontrovertible FACT when I state that the BSFC for a small diesel generator to deliver power to the prop is 14% better than my Yanmar but requires 3 hours run time to replace the power for one hour of motoring.

It is also an incontrovertible FACT that a 10KwH battery can only move my boat 6 NM at a practical cruising speed or into wind, waves, or tidal flow, and will be discharged to 10% of capacity, and will then need 13 KwH of energy to replace that used to move the boat.

It is an economic FACT that I would have to spend $8,000 for the 20KwH batteries to move 12 NM in two hours and would need a $4,000 generator to recharge those batteries in 6-hours.

It is a physical FACT that 20 KwH of batteries and the small generator needed to recharge them will weigh more than my Yanmar and take up far more space.

It is a physical FACT that we do not know how many recharge cycles the new batteries can experience and maintain their efficiency. It is a physical FACT that my 20-year old Yanmar has run for less than 1/3 of it's life expectancy.

It is a weather FACT that in many parts of the country, e.g. the Salish Sea, the wind does not blow a breath for days at a time and the tides run at 2 to 4-knots twice a day and therefore sailing is not an option for days at a time.

It is a physical FACT that a boat trying to move in tidal waters may need 10-horsepower just to stay still in a tidal flow.

It is a physical FACT that four 300-watt solar panels (77” x 39”) need 84 square feet of space, with no shadows or shading, on the boat. At maximum output they would need 21-hours to recharge the 20 KwH used to move my boat 12-miles. Or, if I am a real sailor, they would need 2-hours to replace the power I use to move the boat ONE nautical mile.

You can turn those FACTs into whatever agenda you think appropriate.

I installed a big solar array on our boat in June 2000 and have not used shore power for much of anything since then. I love off the grid life, we were heating our house in 1977 with only wood, but I am sceptical about the practicality of a cruising boat using electrical power for propulsion.

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by jwcolby54

And finally, your

FACT
FACT
FACT
FACT

list makes it feel to me as if you feel attacked for your choices. I for one am not attacking your choices, simply pointing out that you are in fact making choices that require the diesel. That in no way implies that I have to make those same choices.

Tacoma...Facts now have an agenda when they go contrary to someones Hope and Change. We have seen this before and will see it again. The world doesn't like a truth teller these days, it's better to drink the KoolAid than point out that the Emperor has no Clothes...which makes you the bad guy in our upside down world.

[TacomaSailor]

"If you want to believe it won't work, you'll find reasons.
If you want it to work, you will find a way to make it work."

What?

I said it would work - I said the small AC genset and electric propulsion motor was the most economical, based only on BSCF.

What I did say was it does not seem practical and the cost of batteries and generator are much greater than a direct drive diesel system. It works OK but WHY use it?

Bottom line, and please tell me how this is wrong, is you need a diesel genset to replace the KwH used to spin the prop with an electric motor. The most economical example I can find for my boat is only 14% more efficient, on a BSFC basis, and delivers almost no range and little performance.

In my 20-year example of over 30,000 miles cruising, the small genset and battery system would have saved only a few hundred gallons of fuel and would have cost a fortune in battery replacement costs. The carbon footprint of replacing those batteries, over and over again, may be on the same order of magnitude or greater than the diesel fuel I burn.

So, at this point in technology, what is to be gained with the complications, not to mention 3-times as much diesel run time noise, by going diesel-electric?

[jwcolby54]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

it's better to drink the KoolAid

Everyone has an agenda. The koolaid we drink just has a different flavor.

And yes, it is so easy to yank your chain.

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by jwcolby54

I hear ya. But it is an incontrovertible FACT that before there were diesel engines we didn't have diesel engines. People sailed. As someone put it, they sailed right up to the dock. They sailed away from the dock. If there was no wind then they didn't go anywhere.

I have read Joshua Slocum's tome. He was towed into and out of ports on many occasions. It was so common in fact that many ports had launches for hire just for this purpose. Sailing into a dock was not as common (or easy) as one might wish.

[TacomaSailor]

"SolarPlanet is going around the world on all solar powered electric propulsion."

Yes she is ! With 5,511 sq feet of solar panels.

My 40' x 15' foot slip is 600 square feet so the panels on Planet Solar cover the area of over 9 (NINE) normal sized slips. How can anyone think that is practical?

That area of solar panels is roughly 265 300-watt panels which cost, for you or me, $300 / panel when purchased 20 at a time. The panels on Planet Solar therefore cost about $79,000.

The batteries weight 17,000 pounds. Practical?

The batteries can power the boat, at an average power consumption of 20 Kw per hour for 72-hours "of total darkness" so there must be about 1,440 KwH of storage. That would be 144 of the new Tesla wall batteries for a retail price of about $504,000.

There are two 60Kw motors, each of which weigh 200 pounds and cost about $10,000 dollars.

So the propulsion system, ignoring the cost of controllers, cables, inverters, costs about $593,000 and does the work of two Yanmar 4-cylinder turbocharged engines that cost about $20,000 apiece.

The average power requirement, when underway for Planet Solar is 17 Kw or 22 HP at the prop. A Yanmar 4JH3TE makes 12 HP at 2100 RPM and burns .9 GPH or 1.8 GPH for two engines.

The boat moves at 5-knots average and would need about 5,000 hours to make a 25,000 NM circumnavigation while burning 8,000 gallons. A circumnavigation, in a boat with two 80 HP diesels, would burn about 8,000 gallons of diesel at a cost of $40,000.

The same boat with direct drive diesel could circumnavigate 10 times and still have spent a $100k less than it cost to just outfit Planet Solar.

SURE - solar electric can be done but where do you dock a boat that has 5,500 square feet of solar panels?

The thing that really pisses me off is the Planet Solar claim of 0 emissions.

How much energy did it take to build 300 solar panels and 1.4 MW of batteries? Where will they dispose of those highly toxic batteries when they are worn out? What do you do with 5,500 square feet of solar panel when the boat is retired?

I am in the process of designing an off the grid solar system for a house and do love the technology but a little honesty in advertising is needed.