Think of it this way:
At 15 cents per KWH (on the cheap side) 10,000 hours of 100W incandescent light costs $150.
The LED light will use about $30 in electricity.
Tesla just filed a patent for something along those lines:
3 minutes is pretty optimistic though - a battery pack for an electric car with appreciable range is not small, or light. You donât really want a Jiffy Lube attitude when youâre talking about horsing something that big and heavy right next to your un-dented sheet metal.
Getting a little off topic but Iâve been going to LEDs as much as reasonable. I donât know what Iâve spent but probably close to $1500-2000 but I like them. Iâve converted the garage, shop, kitchen, hallway, office, and outside lights. Lights that tend to be used more. Nice bright or similar to standard bulbs as you choose. I do not use CFLs because of the poor light and mercury in them.
To get back on the road, when I overhauled my trailer last year, I even spent the $50 for LED trailer lights and really like them.
Those b@st@rds stole my idea!
Maybe I can cite prior art by linking to my original post here on Cartalk so many years ago?
That lifting rig is far too cumbersome. It needs to be something where the car releases the pack onto a low boy like pallet jack, rolled out fumunder and then reverse the process for replacement pack. Either that, or instead of one huge pack, multiple modules that are easier to handle and replace.
That idea actually originated with the Tucker 48!
While the company wasnât around long enough to develop the concept, the promotional materials spoke about dealerships being able to quickly swap engines from below the car in the event that engine repairs were necessary.
You would get a âloanerâ engine while yours was being repaired, and then you could return at a later date to reverse the process. With that Franklin pancake engine, it might actually have been relatively easy to swap engines, but those military-grade motors were really incredibly tough.
Well, my SO, who is a patent agent, would tell you that yeah, that very well might count against Tesla getting the patent assuming Teslaâs claims match what you said. 
I agree. I envisioned it as more of an oil change pit arrangement. A robot raises a platform which engages the battery. On platform engagement the battery unlocks from the bottom of the car, then the robot lowers the platform into the pit and sticks the battery in a storage rack, then retrieves a fresh one and installs it.
That really could be more on the order of 3 minutes, and it wouldnât require a technician to be there all the time.
1 Like
Forget about vacuum cleaners. Kalashnikov is getting into the car business. The creator of the AK-47 has a prototype flying car.
That Kalashnikov guy is even more talented than I had previously thought, in light of the fact that he has been dead for almost 4 years.
Uhhh⊠corporate creator, not an individual. So much creative work is done by teams these days that I didnât consider Mr. Kalashnikov at all.
Oh my gosh now the Russians are getting into the self-driving action. Would you trust Russian software? Would you feel watched and listened to?
What self driving action? The Kalashnikov is a flying car. It only looks like a drone in that it has several propellers facing vertically, like the retail drones we can buy.
I read an article on cnn about a budget airline working with a plane mfr to develop an electric plane for their short haul routes.
Imagine if they can wrap fuselage with some flexible thin solar panelsâŠ
If you look at some of the other headlines in the Russian paper, they have one on developing a self-driver. Iâve never seen a Russian paper in English before. Of course take it all with a grain of salt. They do lie sometimes.