The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Great news.

http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/renovations-planned-tulsa-landmark/nj36C/ (http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/renovations-planned-tulsa-landmark/nj36C/)


Here is an old postcard of the structure before the service station closed.

(http://dismuke.net/howimages/bluedome.jpg)

That's great

Those old glass globe pumps are expensive. It's a very cool idea. If they do modernize the pumps for Electric car plug in. Who foots the bill for the electricity?

I'm sure it's on here somewhere:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akQao4VXYrA[/youtube]

Excellent, I was just saying the other day that the Blue Dome should actually be used for something public. Other than the building itself and the food truck that is typically parked in front, that prime corner is oddly desolate. Turning it into a food truck court could be amazing. Like a smaller version of Bleu Garten in OKC.

^^I assume they'll be charging for the electricity like every other electric car plugin?

Always enjoyed going in there for a game of pool and a draw....or even a red beer sometimes.  25 cents for a draw or a Coke - your choice!

Ross and Juanita had a nice little place there.  You could always hear the "clacking" sounds of the old guys playing dominoes in the back room, no matter where you were in the bar.  The round part had a pool table.

Probably like most states that offer free charging stations,  the rate payers to the local utility.

Tesla owners get to fill up for free at any Tesla recharge station.  For the life of the car - or however long they own it.

I admit I haven't researched this question because I have zero interest in owning an Electric Car(but that new BMW is bad A**)
How long does it take to charge these cars? Cause my patience level differs from getting a Latte to having to take in a movie.

According to a Diane Rehm show last week there are quick charge stations or you can slow charge in your garage.

Fast Supercharge can be about 30 minutes....enough for a couple hundred more miles.  Home charger usually less charge - longer time.

Check this out - and make sure it zooms all the way out so you can see what is really going on.  Shows just how FAR out of the mainstream of anything technical/new/cool/whatever that Oklahoma really is.  We have one charging station - 80 amp, not evan a Supercharging station - at the Skirvin Hotel in OKC.  Even Bentonville, AR gets 2 Tesla connectors....  we are in the intellectual stone age.  Yeah...companies are lining up to come here, Mary Failin'....rriiiigggghhhhhhtttttt !!

As always, we are right up there with Mississippi and Alabama...

http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/53.5445879,-2.147087499999998,53.39990299999999,-2.3000968999999714,d?search=supercharger



There may be just the tiniest glimmer of a ray of hope, though!  We can at least get Joe Bonamassa on the interwebz!!  Even if he won't come to fly-over country!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSQwj3s8Y4s&index=2&list=RDSbUCUjsZm9E

Long enough that if you are driving one from LA to Phoenix or San Francisco you need to add an hour to an hour and a half to your trip time, and there are only certain routes you can take.


http://openchargemap.org/site/ (http://openchargemap.org/site/)

Just curious as to how many recharging stations Tesla can afford to build at $100k to $175k per station and then cover all the costs to maintain and pay for the electricity for. And the Tesla stations are proprietary, they only work for Tesla cars, so don't pull up in your Nissan Leaf and expect to charge your car.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/26/inside-teslas-supercharger-partner-program-the-costs-and-commitments-of-electrifying-road-transport/ (http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/26/inside-teslas-supercharger-partner-program-the-costs-and-commitments-of-electrifying-road-transport/)

Just gotta ask yourself how much time is it worth beyond a regular gasoline fill up stop at $50 to get the same thing for nothing, but extra 15 minutes.  I would trade that in a second.  Means my time is worth about $200 an hour!!  Almost lawyer rates!!  Would you spend $200 to get there an hour faster?

LA to Frisco...am limited to either highway 1,  101,  Interstate 5, or highway 99.  Not sure why I would choose any other than one of those - unless I wanted to get there by way of Tulsa....

I-10 is definitely the only way I would go to Phoenix, unless maybe wanted to stop for a day or two at Lake Havasu, almost on the way.


As for how many they can build - well, it's Elon Musk.  I bet they will build as many as he wants.  Not many people have more support for just about anything they want to do, since everything he touches seems to turn to gold.  So far.  By 2016, even Okrahoma will be viable as a place to visit with a Tesla. 

http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/53.5445879,-2.147087499999998,53.39990299999999,-2.3000968999999714,d?search=supercharger

And if you are willing to return the same path you took on the way out, the battery swap option cuts "charge" time to a few minutes (5 or 6 IIRC).  And your battery is charged and ready for you on the way back.  I think there is a small fee for that convenience.  And if you can't find a Tesla charger for some reason, or just want to spend some money, you can charge your Tesla at a regular charging station like other electric vehicles do - there is an adapter.

There are new battery technologies out there that enable an automobile battery to be recharged in about 6-8 minutes.  I recently read of a company in Israel that if their technology can be scaled up like they hope, an electric car battery could be recharged in a matter of seconds.

There are some designs that allow inductive charging as you drive over coils buried in the pavement.


Zero to sixty in three seconds has no appeal? 

He's an old fuddy-duddy....

I like this Rhodes car as a short range, "urban" vehicle. There's no mention of whether the electric motor is full time or assist only when pedaling.

http://www.rhoadescar.com/news/2015/01/rhoades-car-opens-doors-to-non-drivers-best-article-ever/

There are a couple of Tesla's in my neighborhood. 250miles on a charge. 400miles on the forthcoming models. Plus 0-60 in under 3 seconds with a launch that leaves the million dollar supercars in it's dust.

This guy mashes the peddle with his family/friends in the car.
caution: language
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpaLgF1uLB8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpaLgF1uLB8[/youtube]

Total crazy talk here, but why is there no way to drive with either the front or rear wheels and generate some charge with the other set?  Probably no way to have big enough generators (sorry the more accurate terminology is beyond me) to be self-sustaining, but I’d think enough to operate accessories.

Same reason you can't lift yourself off of the ground by pulling at your ankles.
You describe a perpetual motion device and/or Rube Goldberg contraption
Think of it this way:  would you try to charge a battery by running a generator with said battery?  An impossible best-case is that your battery level remains constant.
But you're going to lose energy in the mix (friction, inefficient motor, inefficient generator, etc) and there's the added weight of the generators you want to add to the wheels.

Not so crazy:  transfer kinetic energy to the battery when braking.  or perhaps when going down a steep hill.

All the "issues" mentioned so far are merely "early adopter" issues.  It seems clear the future is electric as we get better storage technology / more charging stations / options.

ie: wind farms could charge car batteries and eliminate the need for the transmission lines that tend to be a issue with wind farms.

Or skip the batteries and use the wind farm energy to create fuel cells.

I think the biggest drawback with fuel cells is that we don't really have the hydrogen infrastructure in place.  Yes, it takes special charging stations to get them going quickly, but electricity is mostly everywhere at this point.

AFAIK, wind farms can't be everywhere, seem to be a lot more money down for possibly minimal additions.  How many turbines does it take to generate a steady flow of Hydrogen?

Tesla does use regenerative braking to recharge the batteries when you slow down.

Where you can use the wheels is for regenerative braking.  When brakes are applied, it isn't just pads on disk, it is essentially running the motor as a generator - so that the stopping force puts charge back into the batteries.  Very efficient and effective!  You get a good percentage of the power back that it took to get to the running speed initially.  None of the "travel" charge is regained - that is lost as motion/heat.

I thought Reasors in Bixby and Whole Foods at 91st & Yale have electric car charging stations?

Do the accessories run off the main battery plant in an electric car or is there a separate battery for accessories?  I was simply thinking from the aspect of what the alternator and voltage regulator do in a gas-powered car- run lights and accessories and top off the battery.  Obviously, you could not generate enough charge to top off the main power battery for an electric car, but seems like you could at least extend the range by engaging alternators or generators going downhill (or braking) and employing a solar panel on the roof.

Bear with me, my total knowledge of electricity and electronics is a bit limited.  I know enough to change out a light fixture, add a wall receptacle, or re-wire an antique Harley-Davidson (literally point-to-point diagram: red wire with yellow stripe goes from terminal 22 to terminal 3).

edit/ looks like some of you explained regenerative braking while I was typing.  Thank you!

Also, WF at 91st & Yale also has a bike tuning/repair station.  Nice touch.

The Laws of Thermodynamics are against you.  BKDotCom explained it.  I just gave you the words you were looking for.

Nissan Leaf uses regen braking too.  One of my friends has one.

In answer to Conan, the accessories run off of the main battery system. If you stop at a stop light and are listening to the radio (regardless of it being over the air, mp3, Bluetooth, CD, or satellite radio, it's fed by the battery plant. HVAC runs off of the batteries as well in a true electric car.

I drove a hybrid Ford Escape as a pool car in Arizona, and if you were good at driving it would run up to 30mph on battery power and then the ICE would take over. If you were driving under hybrid mode and the A/C was set at normal when you stopped the A/C shut off. So if it was above 70 degrees, and you stopped at a stoplight, the A/C quit, and you were basting in your own juices.

Yes, you get energy off of regenerative braking, but the energy recovered is small, compared to the energy needed to power a vehicle.

Credit to Elon Musk, he got millions from the gov't to start Tesla, and paid it back, but then went to Goldman Sachs for more. And yes there are the supercharging stations, and the stations where you just get a new battery pack installed, you don't get back the battery pack you started with in return.

I'm not going to say that Tesla is in the same realm as Solyndra, Fiskar, and others, but to think that it's all paid for by Elon is pure fantasy. There is a tax payment of $7500.00 from the fed, and $2500.00+ from states, so approximately $10,000.oo plus comes out of tax payers for each Tesla car.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/teslas-feat-of-financial-engineering/2013/09/20/c4d4667e-e26a-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/teslas-feat-of-financial-engineering/2013/09/20/c4d4667e-e26a-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html)

http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/esg-impact/places/san-francisco/tesla/ (http://www.goldmansachs.com/s/esg-impact/places/san-francisco/tesla/)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2013/05/11/the-real-reason-tesla-is-still-alive-and-other-green-car-companies-arent/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2013/05/11/the-real-reason-tesla-is-still-alive-and-other-green-car-companies-arent/)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324659404578499460139237952 (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324659404578499460139237952)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/15/tesla-continues-to-roll-out-tax-strategies-for-consumers/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/15/tesla-continues-to-roll-out-tax-strategies-for-consumers/)

Agree, but I understood the suggestion to be a means of avoiding long-range transmission line issues, and perhaps the intermittent nature of wind power, by setting up change-out battery charging facilities near wind farms.  If I read that correctly then I would submit that the infrastructure needs to set up a change-out hydrogen fuel cell facility would be similar to that of a change-out battery charging facility.

Re your question, I am not certain, but I don't think the electricity requirements to split water into its components including hydrogen is unusual, e.g., I think it is accomplished in high school chemistry classes using regular 110 current.  However, like anything else, more electricity would be required to do it at commercial scale.  The problem is it is not yet efficient to develop fuel cells compared to other uses of electricity, but generating fuel cells with an otherwise stranded source of power might make sense.  Just a thought.

The expectation has been that you go out and back the same path - you do get your battery back, charged and ready to install.  If you don't do that, that's ok.  I would make it a point to return if I were gonna swap it out.  Just stop at a place 20 miles from home, swap it out, then come back within 20 miles on the way back. 

Would rather take a little break from time to time to charge.  Gonna want to stop sooner than 170 miles anyway.