Tesla's to unveil $35K Model in 2016; will go on sale in 2017

[Grey Fox]

Why is there a 2 story hole in the middle?

[Monoriu]

Why is there a 2 story hole in the middle?

Fire safety.  Those are empty floors with nothing inside, just a concrete shell.  The fear is that, if there is a fire, the people who live in the top half won't make it to the ground alive by stairs.  So these floors provide a temporary refuge for the folks living above.  As there is nothing inside, there is nothing to burn. 

[Monoriu]

I really hate that blue glass facade fashion.  Has there been a single building in the world with it that aged well, and didn't start looking like an abandoned warehouse 5 years after being built?

It all depends on if there is a management company and owners' committee.  If yes, they can make the residents pay management fees, and the company will maintain the building.  I pay around US$250 per month.  Of course it also covers a lot of stuff like 24 hour security, trash collection, a gym, a pool, lift maintenance, public area cleansing and lots of other stuff.  So if there is a management company, things should be fine.

If not, then what usually happens is someone will refuse to pay the fees, and more people will follow.  Until no one pays, and no one does anything.  Then the building will fall into disrepair.  The worst case is that it collasped.  Yeah, just a few years ago. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXj7vZtE_eA

[DGuller]

Why is there a 2 story hole in the middle?

Fire safety.  Those are empty floors with nothing inside, just a concrete shell.  The fear is that, if there is a fire, the people who live in the top half won't make it to the ground alive by stairs.  So these floors provide a temporary refuge for the folks living above.  As there is nothing inside, there is nothing to burn.

What about smoke inhalation?

[DGuller]

I really hate that blue glass facade fashion.  Has there been a single building in the world with it that aged well, and didn't start looking like an abandoned warehouse 5 years after being built?

It all depends on if there is a management company and owners' committee.  If yes, they can make the residents pay management fees, and the company will maintain the building.  I pay around US$250 per month.  Of course it also covers a lot of stuff like 24 hour security, trash collection, a gym, a pool, lift maintenance, public area cleansing and lots of other stuff.  So if there is a management company, things should be fine.

If not, then what usually happens is someone will refuse to pay the fees, and more people will follow.  Until no one pays, and no one does anything.  Then the building will fall into disrepair.  The worst case is that it collasped.  Yeah, just a few years ago. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXj7vZtE_eA

Buildings, even badly maintained, aren't supposed to do that.

[Monoriu]

What about smoke inhalation?

The buildings are designed in such a way that smoke won't spread too quickly.  For example, all the doors are made of solid wood that are supposed to last for an hour or more if there is a fire.  One of the management company's tasks is to send security patrol around every day to make sure that all these doors are closed.  There are two flights of stairs connecting each floor on opposite ends.  So if one flight of stairs is filled with smoke, there is always another.  There is also supposed to be some supplies in the empty floors, like water, towels and fire extinguishers. 

[Grey Fox]

Why is there a 2 story hole in the middle?

Fire safety.  Those are empty floors with nothing inside, just a concrete shell.  The fear is that, if there is a fire, the people who live in the top half won't make it to the ground alive by stairs.  So these floors provide a temporary refuge for the folks living above.  As there is nothing inside, there is nothing to burn.

I like it.

[viper37]

Finding a place to charge the electric car is going to be a huge nightmare.  Deal-breaker, even. 

Not over here.  Even in my small town there are electric recharge at many convenient places.

US$40k is pretty close to the limit of how much I can spend on a car.  That really punches a hole in the balance sheet.  Can't imagine someone spending US$100k on a car. 

Neither can I, but I'm not a millionaire, yet.

[The Minsky Moment]

There is no way I will spend that kind of money on an unproven technology.

You should stick with horses.
These new-fangled horseless carriages are loud, smelly and very dangerous.  And can you imagine millions of people in a city trying to drive them around in small spaces?  Impossible.  They will never work in Hong Kong.

[Zanza]

Ok, this is a rather typical housing estate in HK.  To build it, you first drill tons of pills say 200m downward until they reach solid bedrock.  Then you build a podium of, say, 6-8 floors above it.  Then you build buildings on top of the podium.  The carpark is inside the podium.  You can't just demolish the carparks and "rebuild" them.

The carparks are managed by a management company.  They "own" all the public spaces, corridors and lifts.  But each individual carpark is owned separately.  So unless you secure approval of absolutely everybody, there is almost no hope of rebuilding the carpark.

I think the sheer concentration of housing makes it easier to establish car chargers. These big complexes will already have a powerful electricity connection to the grid. And you just need to build chargers in one place (namely that concentrated carpark) and not distributed. High population density seems to be an advantage for the adoption of this technology.

[crazy canuck]

Unfortunately it is going to be even smaller than the current model and so it is unlikely I will fit.

[Syt]

Just where do you propose the "wall socket" should be located?  And how do I install the wall socket without somehow running cables through another owner's space?

In the ground and in the floor.

I could imagine a future where all major parking lots and garages in houses, malls, office towers etc. will have chargers, and plugging in your car when you park it will become as second nature as locking the doors. There should also be a data connection that identifies you and your car and the consumption gets added to your usual power supplier's bill.

[Zanza]

We'll probably have wireless charging for cars within this decade, so you could just fit parking lots with it and park your car there and you would be done. The car can obviously identify itself via mobile phone, RFID or car-to-x network.

Anyway, Hong Kong is hardly the chief concern as it is a tiny market. It will be more interesting to see how Tesla does in North America, Europe and mainland China in the next year or two. And especially once they launch that $35,000 electric car.

[Iormlund]

As mentioned, hive cities are ideal for electric cars. The problem is inertia, but that's where the government would step in. Having the cars loading at night would diminish pollution (and thus lower health costs and boost productivity) and make electrical energy demand higher at night (which would allow to shift a portion of daytime generation to baseload sources like nuclear).

[Monoriu]

The biggest problem I think, is that the main benefit of electric cars, namely that it doesn't pollute, is a social benefit.  The car owner pays for it in terms of higher purchase cost, reduced range, inferior performance etc, but won't notice the marginal reduction in pollution.  For the individual owners, the only benefit seems to be reduced fuel cost, but this must be weighed against the problems mentioned earlier.