Quote:
Originally Posted by Nycteus
Tesla's quote on their website is $49,900.
As an Electrical Engineer... this will never happen. Wind is not even close to being reliable or sufficient enough of a power source. Solar panels are not efficient enough. If I can recall some old calculations, we can only capture 80 Watts per square meter of energy from the sun (trying to recall... I think the sun outputs close to 800 Watts per square meter) so we'd need something like the entire northeastern section of the US to be covered in solar panels to supply the power being produced by coal/gas power plants.
Also, coal power is suprisingly clean.
However, Nuclear Power is what we want/need for clean power generation but it is too tied up in danger/politics.
Also, for the guy saying about efficiency:
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So many well educated people on this board.
I do believe you are correct, we currently are only able to capture 1/10th of the energy the sun puts out.
(As for a total... numbers are all over the place, but multiply what we currently can get by 10, and that's a pretty good increase.) And if the sun puts it out, there's gotta be a way to harness it.
"Here comes the sun... and I say it's all right!"
But as for storage of that other 9/10ths of energy, if/when man does capture it... well, you probably know better than most. Current battery/storage technology just doesn't cut it... so we better make that leap along the way. I don't want to understate man's ingenuity... I do believe we still have some
L-E-A-P-S ahead of us.
Tesla, if nothing else, represents high performance. They may never turn another dime profit. But it is crystal clear there is a huge desire for success in alternate fuels. And Tesla just proves there is a possibilty for alternate fuels to compete in the performance arena. Not perfect, no... but it is hope.
(Real hope... not that other sh*t!)
As for right here right now, I agree... Nuclear is currently the best way to move away from conventional fossil fuels, for electricity at least. Why it has been all but abandoned in the US, is beyond me. Mr. Einstein didn't share his wisdom with us... for us to squander it.
Nuke it!