http://www.enviromission.com.au/
Posted on 05/21/2007 4:16:57 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It goes zero to 60 in about four seconds. Its top speed is 130 miles per hour. And it doesn't use an ounce of gasoline.
It's the Tesla Roadster, a new car that's fueled entirely by electricity and could be hitting the lot just in time. Today the Energy Department reported that the average gallon of regular gasoline is now $3.10 -- a new nominal record price for the United States.
Meet The New Electric Car! The Tesla Roadster is named after Nicola Tesla, the largely forgotten genius inventor of alternating current electricity, and it's the brainchild of Martin Eberhard, who said he designed it because he cares about the environment and because he wanted one for himself.
"It's time for us to do something about our dependence on foreign oil," Eberhard said. "It's time for us to do something about global warming. But I wasn't ready to go drive around some goofy little car. … Think of how electric cars look. All the ones you've ever thought of."
There haven't been many electric cars. Early automobiles ran on electricity, as did General Motor's ill-fated and quickly abandoned EV1, which debuted in the 1990s and died soon thereafter. Eberhard said there's "nothing beautiful" about the Prius, perhaps the best-known hybrid car. "It doesn't do anything for me," he said. "Think of it this way. A world of 100 percent hybrids is still 100 percent addicted to oil."
'The Next Great American Car Company' So Eberhard, who made his fortune with a couple of Internet companies, set out to build the car he wanted to drive, one that would change the image of the electric car forever. Eberhard said he wanted "to get people to think of electric cars as being actually hip and desirable and fun."
And that's only the beginning. Eberhard also wants to achieve something even he admits is audacious.
"Our ultimate goal is to be the next great American car company," he said, "to have a whole line of cars for every kind of driver and all of them not burning gasoline."
Eberhard teamed with another Internet millionaire, Elon Musk, the man who invented PayPal. The 35-year-old Musk is busy with another venture called Space X, which, among other projects, is contracted to design, build and operate NASA's replacement shuttle for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station. Musk said it took only five days for him to decide to invest in Tesla after meeting with Eberhard. He's put $37 million into the company so far.
"I am a big believer in Tesla, and I believe it's going to be a great success," Musk said.
Meet The New Electric Car! Behind the Wheel Instead of starting with a mass market vehicle, Tesla's doing just the opposite: starting at the high end and working its way down.
"I really believe the right entry point in the market is a sports car," Musk said. "Because there, people are willing to pay a high unit cost. So you get that into the market, and you continue to innovate and optimize and go progressively higher volume and more affordable with each successive model."
In four months they had orders for all of their "signature" cars. The first 100, with a $100,000 price tag, sold to the likes of George Clooney, the founders of Google, Arnold Schwarzenegger and William of the Black Eyed Peas.
Going forward, they plan to make 1,000 Roadsters a year, with a sticker price of $92,000. That investment gets customers a two-seater that weighs in at a relatively light 2,600 pounds and is powered by lithium ion batteries, like the ones in your computer … exactly 6,381 of them.
"They are the exact same kind of cell that would power a lap top computer or a camcorder," explained David Vespremi, Tesla Motors' director of public relations, while showing us the car. "This is very different from a combustion engine."
So different, in fact, that it isn't an engine at all -- it's a motor.
Fewer Moving Parts "The motor [is] tiny by comparison to an engine in a typical combustion car. It weighs about 77 pounds, and you could literally put it in a backpack and walk out of the room with it if you chose to," Vespremi said, while showing us the car. "What it does is, it has one moving part. It's an AC motor, so it takes current straight from the battery and turns that into … the power that moves the car down the road."
Is there anything that a standard gasoline-powered car offers that the Tesla lacks?
"Well, you have all the belts and the hoses and the gaskets and the plugs and exhaust components. None of that exists with this car. The entire drive line consists of 12 moving parts," Eberhard said, as opposed to thousands in a regular car.
But there are drawbacks: The battery pack is warrantied for 100,000 miles, but after that, replacement could be costly -- in the thousands of dollars. Tesla argues that with battery technology improving every year, each successive year's models will be better. You're not completely off the grid because it does require electricity, and you can go only 200 miles between charges.
Vespremi said the charging station can be installed by "any competent electrician," and it allows you "to get that quick charging time of 3½ hours. Most people hook it up to the drier circuit. And then you just treat it like a gas pump."
The Roadster is still in test mode -- the company hopes to start actual production this fall. The car has gone for its first round of safety tests and, according to the company, has done extremely well.
Vespremi told us that part of the reason the car is so safe is because the chassis is made of extruded bonded aluminum, "the exact same kind of chassis that would be used in something like a Formula One car or an Indy car. This is what allows those drivers to wreck at a couple hundred miles per hour and walk away," he explained.
'I Like Fast' So far, those who've put down deposits can't even test drive the Roadster; they can only be driven in it. Bob Huntley and his wife, Marilyn Miller, flew to San Carlos, Calif., from Houston to see what they're getting.
"I like fast, obviously," Huntley said, "but more important to me is the smile I will have knowing that I am not putting $50 gas in every time I want to go 200 miles. It's perfect. And I get to pass everyone while I do it."
While they work to get the Roadster street ready, the engineers at Tesla are pushing ahead on two more models. The designs are under wraps, but they envision a family-size sedan and a smaller mass-market electric car in the next two to five years. But the real money may come in selling their technology.
"We are in negotiations with some fairly big auto companies, so we hope to make a really big difference in CO2 concentration in three ways," said Musk. "One is in the cars we make ourselves, two is the licensing the electric drive trains and accelerating the technology deployment in other car companies, and three is by serving as a good example to the rest of the auto industry and hoping that they follow our lead."
Capitalism and Altruism Musk says there is an element of altruism behind the company, but that the best way to serve their goal is to make Tesla a profitable company.
"There's a lot to be said for money and glory," said Musk. "I wouldn't say that those were unimportant. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money or have a glorious outcome. Those are good things. For me personally that's not the most important thing. But I still value those things. I'm not Mother Teresa."
Though design and testing takes place just south of San Francisco, the Tesla Roadsters will be built at the Lotus Elise plant in Hithel, England. And who gets the first car off the assembly line?
"Well, I get car No. 1," said Musk. "I guess there are some advantages to investing $37 million in a company."
Another advantage could be immortality. If Tesla works, it would be the first successful startup auto manufacturer in the United States in more than 50 years.
One other thing - forget about charging the car and running the dryer at the same time. Cripes, just buy another circuit breaker, or if necessary, an auxiliary power panel.
I can imagine the time will come when charging the batteries from solar panels on the house roof is a reality...this vehicle should sell very well in Australia, where sunlight is abundant all year.
“If nuclear energy were supplying most or all of our electricity, I could see their point, but it’s not. Coal is where we get the lion’s share of our electric and it’s more polluting than gasoline and diesel”
We have something like enough coal to last 600 yrs. Normally I am against projects like this, but in this case, I am intrigued. First of all, I like the looks of the proto-type. And secondly, I believe, unlike previous tries, they are coming at it from a capitalistic viewpoint instead of mostly it’s good for the environment ploy. Building something with your eye on it being a moneymaker always makes the chances of success greater. I like their approach although I couldn’t afford their vehicle.
“Nikola Tesla generated electricity without using fuel, without using solar, without using wind. The technology is known today. It is time to introduce a true fuel independent electric car. Government does not want it. It is truely green. No greenhouse gases ever.”
It uses doobie power, the same ones you are smoking.
Wow, looks pretty cool and goes fast.
When they are 18k I want one.
Ah. California. ‘Splains it.
They bought into the theory that we had enough generation plants to last a long long time some time back and then got hammered with reality.
I think only California was that dumb, but I could be wrong...
AND has decent range. The big catch with the Tesla is that it achieves these stats by using Li-ON batteries, the kind used in upscale laptops. A set of these is the most expensive part of the car, and they last about two years. Then you have to buy them all over again.
“I can imagine the time will come when charging the batteries from solar panels on the house roof is a reality..”
maybe when the sun supernovas....at it’s present energy density, you’d have to have a big house to recharge an electric vehicle in a week, much less a day.
I like it.
And as battery technology advances, and improvements are made, the cost of these vehicles will come down, and will become more efficient in terms of charging time and extended battery range.
Just one of the reactors at Diablo Canyon put out more juice than all the windpower worldwide combined.
Nuclear power, from a purely technical standpoint is ideal for the generation of electricity for this type of purpose, as well as being (groan) “carbon neutral.”
Wouldn’t a large majority of folks who live in town be served much better by something as simple as a “golf cart”?
Club Car is one company that makes very nice “golf carts” that are used for a lot of other uses than the golf course.
$8000 sounds a lot better than $80,000; the problem is political buearcracy more than anything, since they are not DOT/OSHA/EPA/FCC/FDA/IRS/ approved for “highway use.”
OK, 100,000 miles on the batteries before they need changing. That is the only hard number we got here.
At 25 mpg in gasoline, that is 4000 galons of gas over the 100,000 miles. At $3.00 per gallon, that is $12,000 dollars. PLUS the actual cost of the electricity needed to charge the batteries.
I’m no engineer, but.. on the thread linked another poster went this route:
“If the wondercar got 40 mpg, it would burn 5 gallons of gas to go 200 miles, at a cost of $15. 1 gallon is 35 KWH of electricity, cars are 13% efficient (on average) so the amount of electricity at the tire to do the same work is 197 KWH, which around here would cost .12 per KWH or about 23 bucks.”
thanks for your post..
http://www.enviromission.com.au/
Of course to be clean, all electric cars will have to be recharged from clean electricity. But most grid power in this country comes from those bad-boy fossil fuels.
In order to remain Environmentally Correct (read: assuage guilt), those who buy plug-in cars need to pony (did I really say that?) up an additional fee.
Taking inspiration from the now-sanctified Carbon Credit, let our new fee be called the “Nuclear Headroom Credit.” The environmentally pious buyer will buy enough NucleHeads to build that fraction of Atomic generation capacity adequate to charge up his car.
Who will administer this fund?
(Ahem...) Modesty prevents me.
I would not use the word "exciting". When I see people spending good money to solve a non-problem created by junk science, the word that comes to mind is "nauseating".
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