Fire burns 8 cars at Disneyland garage

What is your commute?

I drive 145 miles from a western suburb of Cleveland to the Detroit airport, park it for 3 or 4 days, then back home. I do this 3, sometimes 4 times a month. Just a hair outside the stated range of a Model S. The Employee Lot doesn't have chargers. Not sure if the Airport parking garages do, but I wouldn't pay $15/day anyways. I'm sure in the future, the infrastructure will exist, but not now. Like I said, a Tesla Model 3 with a gas backup would be great, and a serious consideration.

But, much like Josh, I'm actually quite happy with my Mazda 3. While I don't get 41mpg because I got the bigger engine, it's an amazing car for it's class.

There's a very convenient supercharger in Maumee that would solve the problem, if you had a Tesla, but I understand that ain't cheap.

It is kind of ironic that as more cars are being made battery powered, most warehouses are trading their batteries for hydrogen fuel cells. The main problem with the batteries where I work was, even with three batteries per piece of equipment, we drained the batteries faster than we could recharge them.

Industrial applications have been pretty uneven, and not very high quality. If I can drive a car on electrons for a thousand miles in any given day, warehouses should be a piece of cake. Certainly Tesla has robots running stuff all over their factories, and Amazon isn't using hydrogen robots in its DC's.

As odd as it may seem, a forklift that only travels eight miles per hour uses a lot more electricity per hour than most electric cars. Forklifts weigh in excess of 10,000 pounds and start and stop constantly, not to mention needing to run the hydraulic pumps needed to lift 3,000 pounds vertical at a high rate of speed. Now factor in that most people average less than two hours a day in their car, compared to most warehouses run their industrial trucks for eighteen plus hours per day. I will maintain that a warehouse environment is a lot harder on batteries than automotive use.

Most fulfillment centers are designed around the automated equipment. Why would a company power automated equipment off of a battery or fuel cell, when they could just give it an exclusive running track, and power it with a bus bar?

Because those are constraints, and the best companies in the world at this don't like constraints. So they use electric robots.

Amazon DC:

Tesla Gigafactory:

Both hydrogen fuel cells and lithium ion batteries put out electricity.

I'm aware of that. But the innovators aren't using fuel cells.

It is very difficult to assess what is being developed in the logistics industry based upon videos put out by the PR department.

By the way, in the amazon video above, notice with the exception of the rack carriers, all the automated equipment shown was powered off the mains. Also notice in the Tesla video, all the workers are wearing shoe covers, not practical in most work environments

The big players are investing heavily in hydrogen technology. Here is an article from the food logistics magazine that was written after a major corporation started to make the switch. http://www.foodlogistics.com/news/12000311/walmart-expands-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles

The robots moving the racks at Amazon run for an hour and then charge 5 minutes. What isn't practical about that? The Tesla factory is building more batteries then anyone, and I hadn't no idea what the robots have to do with footware (I'm guessing nothing).

What point are you trying to argue? That battery powered stuff isn't practical? By the time it's done, the Gigafactory will be off the grid and run on sustainable energy, as the largest building on the planet under one roof.

My point regarding the footwear is that the robot requires no dirt or debris on the floor, or it will get stuck. Your right though, that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion on whether rare earth batteries or hydrogen is the future. We could argue for hours, but I do not think either one of us can predict the future or change the others mind.

How is that for the robot? It's a manufacturing facility where they're particularly worried about dirt.

There isn't anything to debate. How many EV's vs. hydrogen cars were sold last year? Which provides the infrastructure in your house today?

I thought of this story again the other day. Did they ever publish what caused the fire to start? A quick google search only reveals the original headlines from Feb. Shirley the cause has been determined by now.

Was it vandalism, battery fire?

Sorry for the necro-post... carry on.

Tommytheduck said:
Shirley, the cause has been determined by now.

Fixed that for you.
Punctuation is everything.

I think he actually meant it as an appositive:

"Shirley, the cause, has been determined by now."