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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

The Tesla takes ninety seconds to get a battery which will last 235 miles. (http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts)

The Audi A4 takes three minutes to get a tank of gas which will last 448 miles. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/)

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Most Audi A4s in the UK are probably the 2 litre inline 4 diesel. See the specs page here: http://www.audi.co.uk/new-cars/a4/a4-saloon/specifications.h.... Note that figures are in miles per Imperial gallon. The EU tests can produce unrealistic results, but the combined figure is usually actually attainable in practice under realistic conditions.

58.9 miles per imperial gallon in miles per 16.1 US gallons = 789.6 miles.

Diesel fuel is denser, but it comes out of the pump just as quickly. Add perhaps 20 seconds for donning and discarding your disposable gloves.

N.B., the Tesla probably accelerates better and with less noise than the 2L diesel. But that said, for the cost of a Tesla, you could probably buy an Audi A4 and run it for 25 years (in the rather unlikely event your car search has narrowed itself down to exactly these two types of car).

Is using disposable gloves while pumping gas an English thing? I've never heard of it before

It depends on where you're fueling -- some diesel pumps are really dirty (although this seems more common at truck stops and marinas/ag diesel tanks).

For insanity, the Army fueling procedure involves putting a drip tray underneath the vehicle, wearing gloves/mask/etc., etc. Which maybe makes sense for some tactical vehicles, but is silly when they're putting regular auto gas into a leased SUV. This might have just been a contract requirement in Iraq/Afghanistan/Kuwait. The contrast with the civilian Iraqi fueling (plastic bottles by the side of the road...not fuel bottles, but 1.5L water bottles), and the Kuwaiti civilian stations (leave the vehicle running, remain in the vehicle smoking/on phone/etc. during fueling), was quite marked.

I've never encountered a very dirty pump. Certainly nothing that I felt I had to wear gloves with. Do American gas stations clean their pumps more often?

Diesel stink stays on your hands and clothes a long time. It's far more annoying than gasoline in that regard. (it's unclear if you're speaking from diesel or gasoline experience)

Not when using the petrol pump, but the diesel pumps are dirty enough often enough to make routine use of gloves worthwhile.

Virtually all petrol stations provide disposable gloves near the fuel pumps for this reason.

Diesel is kind of cheating -- you can go to a truck stop and use the high flow pumps (not sure if it works on the 2.0 TDI, it has to do with the vents in the fuel tank, but it works on a lot of non-semi diesel vehicles, including sedans and pickups). They're about 30 US gallons per minute.

Diesel is cheating, but switching out the entire battery pack isn't?

I own one. I routinely get over 600 miles, but 700 needs careful and slow driving. This A4 is a really tough comparison because the fuel economy and driveability is way better than most mid-size cars. The Tesla looks a lot better if you compare it to either more typical sedans or to its more direct competition which is sports cars. Eg compare to an R8 and the range difference is much reduced.

You've got your numbers wrong with the Model S range. The 85kWh pack will go 300 miles by Tesla's estimates. The EPA range is 265 (not 235), but I've driven from Atlanta to Savannah which is approximately 260 miles with 40 miles of range to spare.

Tesla's numbers are good for distance driving and the EPA estimates are good for in-town driving. But since the battery swap is mainly applicable to distance driving, I would use Tesla's estimates.

While your point is valid, how often do you expect to have a battery swap? How often to you refill your car?

Battery swap is for long road trips, not everyday usage.

I think we should just accept the poor range of Tesla and still root for it, because fundamentally, the technology is good for us and should be the future. We should accept it with all of its faults.

I'm happy it made it through (while Fisker didn't), if only for the cool factor... or whatever is the reason Tesla made it and Fisker didn't. I hope it keeps on rocking, so it can fund more research into improving the battery life until EV are decidedly better than gasoline vehicles.

On a side note -- I get 70mpg from my Prius C class when I'm supermiling. The car cost me 20k USD as I bought it new. I understand Toyota has a plugin hybrid too: http://www.toyota.com/prius-plug-in/

That's exactly it. There are so many downsides to internal combustion engines (exhaust that will literally kill you, horribly complicated with hundreds of moving parts, cost of fuel, etc), but no one ever mentions them when discussing the downsides to electric.

There is a lot of truth to this. If internal combustion engines were being rolled out today, people would be discussing those downsides. But, ICEs have been with us for quite some time, so we've accepted the downsides and mitigated where possible. This happens with anything that is new but competes with something that is old.

Personally, I am strongly rooting for Tesla. Even is Tesla fails, they will have significantly changed the automobile landscape.

Tesla made it because they're focusing on the car - their goal isn't to make a better electric car, it's to make a better car, period.

And they're largely succeeding. This is a company that will do anything to improve the product. Even build a nation-wide network of superchargers. That makes all the difference.

This is really the only correct response to give to pedants like jmduke.

The more pedantic, the more upvotes comments get from me. To me, the relatively high ratio of pedantic comments is a large part of HN’s appeal.

Anyways, I’m still rooting for an initiative akin to BetterPlace[1] to take off worldwide. I think having battery swapping stations at lots of places (like say, at every gas station) is a good solution to the action radius problem of electric cars.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

Note that in the video they were getting 23.221 gallons which probably means it was an Audi A8.

When I think about how to optimize the time of my day, it's certainly not the time I have to wait while the gas is filling up my tank. 3 minutes looks like a worse-case too. Not sure if that's 100 % honest.

The demo was to convince people that length of time at the gas station is not an argument against electric cars. Slam dunk for Tesla, methinks. I am not sure that swapping batteries is what we're going to do going forward - but it's an innovative approach and Tesla is doing a pretty good job making it practical.

It is still weird that they didn't find a solution where a supercharger station takes a few minutes to charge a car. I am sure they're working on it, and also I can't help but think that this is how it will work eventually.

Battery swapping is just an intermediary solution.

Tesla is very much at the forefront of electric car development, it's pretty exciting. Problems arise, solutions are tried, some will be discarded again - but the point is, they're doing it, and they will succeed, eventually.

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