Insanely Great: An Apple Automobile Dashboard; Data Points On The Tesla Battery, Degradation, Range, Cost -- February 17, 2015

ISIS And OBAMA

Two data points:

• while Christians were beheaded, President Obama spent the weekend golfing in Florida
• Obama White House says finding jobs, helping them "start businesses" is how we need to fight ISIS

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Apple - Tesla

This writer has got it right. Silicon Beat is reporting:

“If Apple was going to make a car, it would be ten times easier to just buy Tesla. But Apple doesn’t want a single branded experience, it wants Apple in many, many cars.”
— Tim Bajarin, analyst with Creative Strategies, on reports that Apple is working on an electric vehicle. 

Bajarin tells USA Today it makes more sense that Apple is instead working on owning the car dashboard — by integrating an iPhone-like platform in different makes and models of vehicles.

Apple operating systems have long had a "dashboard" and still do.

An "Apple automobile dashboard" seems insanely great.

And Apple may be a lot closer than folks realize. Those "Apple" cars may already be "beta-testing" their Apple dashboard. Meanwhile, Apple could already be talking with automobile manufacturers -- remember, automobile manufacturers contract out all kids of components and sub-components.

And what one could see on an integrated Apple-Tesla dashboard (radio, mapping, iRadio/iTunes, market, breaking news, PC-access, FaceTime):

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More Spin

This is the Retuers headline: U.S. West Coast ports reopen as labor secretary arrives for talks --

U.S. West Coast ports that were closed to incoming cargo vessels during the holiday weekend reopened in full on Tuesday as Labor Secretary Tom Perez arrived in San Francisco seeking to broker a settlement ending months of shipping disruptions.

The Secretary's arrival had nothing to do with the opening of the ports. The port operators announced some time ago that they would close the ports over the 3- or 4-day Presidents Day weekend so they would not have to pay overtime pay to the dockworkers who are already alleged to be purposely slowing down unloading in the job action.

Update: a reader pointed out that the slowdown is real, that I should not have used "alleged." Corrected. I was writing fast and couldn't remember if it's a strike, a slowdown, a job action, whatever. I used the wrong word.

The reader also explained why the US Secretary goes to San Francisco, not Los Angeles. I thought it was due to Pelosi and Feinstein both being from San Francisco, but it turns out the Pacific Maritime Association and the ILWU are both headquartered in the city. Interesting.

A huge "thank you" to the reader.

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Greece Update

Markets turn positive. Yahoo!Finance is reporting:

U.S. stocks traded positive Tuesday afternoon after reports surfaced that Greece would seek a bailout extension on Wednesday. S&P 500 reached a new record high after reaching 2,100.

See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

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Tesla Batteries

Noting a Tesla battery replacement priced at $44,000, a writer dug a little deeper. is reporting;

My 2013 Tesla Model S, when new, had an EPA range of 265 miles. But six or eight years down the road, with 100,000-plus miles on the odometer, there’s no way to know what my range will be.

It’s an especially worrisome question for Model S owners, for two reasons:

• First, the list price of a replacement 85-kWh battery pack is a whopping $44,000. (That cost would presumably be reduced by the trade-in value of the old pack, a number that has not been publicly revealed as far as I know.)
• Second, it’s a little-noticed fact that Tesla’s eight-year “infinite-mile” battery-pack warranty doesn’t actually guarantee any particular level of capacity.  It only guarantees that the battery will work properly to propel the car.

Other data points:

• range losses of the two-seat predecessor, the Roadster, less than expected since 2008 introduction
• the typical Roadster should still have 80-85 percent battery capacity after 100,000 miles
• recent Model S numbers from The Netherlands are even more encouraging
• after 100,000 miles, the typical Model S is projected to retain about 92 percent of its battery capacity and range
• a range loss of only about 21 miles, from 265 to 244 miles

Distance from West Los Angeles to San Francisco: 342 miles. At a full charge on a brand new battery, your $100,000+ luxury car won't get you from your McMansion in Hollywood to the new Apple headquarters building in Cupertino.

The writer also noted that it is widely believed that heavy use of ultra-fast DC chargers, such as the Tesla Superchargers and CHAdeMO charging stations, may reduce battery life as well.

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Yemen

One wonders, with the new government in Yemen, whether this movie will be released in that country. After all, the protagonists are Yemeni-American. LOL.

What Is Love, A Night At The Roxbury, Haddaway