An Electric Car With Juice (Nikola Tesla&Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Washington Post ^ | July 22, 2006 | Mike Musgrove

[kronos77]

The Tesla Roadster goes from zero to 60 in four noiseless seconds, has a top speed of 135 mph and can roam for more than 200 miles before needing a recharge.

...

Silicon Valley start-up Tesla Motors Inc. raised $60 million in financing from San Francisco Bay area tech giants to get this car on the road. Those famous Toyota Prius owners Larry Page and Sergey Brin -- yes, the Google guys -- have invested, as have executives from eBay Inc. and PayPal.

The company is headed by entrepreneur Martin Eberhard, the man once behind a gadget called the RocketeBook. That product, sort of an iPod for books, didn't catch on, but Eberhard sold the company in 2000 to the media company Gemstar for $187 million. ....

The Tesla Roadster was unveiled this week in Santa Monica. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a surprise appearance and was taken on a test spin -- it was unclear yesterday if Schwarzenegger showed up to the event in one of the gas-guzzling Hummers he has sometimes favored.

[Rca2000]

I have to admit is is a positive step.

Many more are needed, however. Such as a methanol fueled fuel cell for the power source.

[FormerLib]

So a bunch of Left-Coast leftists end up sitting in the dark with no AC...

What's the downside here? I'm lookin' for the downside...

[Rca2000]

I have to admit...that does not sound too bad!!!

[rivercat]

Now a $30,000 mini-van that has a range of 400 miles and does not cost any gas. That just might appeal to some folks

I don't think that a mini-van will ever appeal to anyone...at least not anyone with taste!

[calcowgirl]

Here's what Tesla says:

http://www.teslamotors.com/engineering/how_it_works.php

[glorgau]

Just as a note, the public parking garages in downtown Palo Alto have electric hookups for cars like this. These are going to MAJOR status symbols in that town.

[calcowgirl]

There was an article today about power demand in Los Angeles. Department of Water and Power "officials attributed the surge to demand for 24-hour air conditioner use and the popularity of energy-eating large-screen plasma TVs." I would guess they use a whole lot less than electric cars being charged a few times a week.

[Moonman62]

True, but his distribution method later became known as "radio". Marconi simply set off a spark-gap...about the equivalent of a smoke signal in radio transmission. Tesla's device put out a true radio "signal".

Later? I thought it was pretty much concurrent. Anyway, wireless was good for radio, not power distribution. Why didn't Tesla see that?

[Rca2000]

OVERALL-- they would use less total power than those devices do.... BUT during the time they are recharging, they would use a LOT more than the A/C or plasma sets do.

Plasma tv's tend to use about double that of a comparable-sized projection tv. FOr exmple, a 42" plasma will use about 400watts, to a comparable projo of 200 watts or less.

The Tesla car will most likely use about 10KW. of power, for 3-4 hours, to recharge.

That is a lot of plasma tv's.and a couple of A/C units, (for an average 1800 SQ. ft house, needing a 3-ton 12 SEER A/C unit.)

A few of these cars charging will not overburden the system...but several hundred(or thousands) of them most likely will!!

[Dixie Yooper]

I understand that, and you forgot to mention nuclear energy. Energy regardless of it's source will always cost more and more money. I just feel that oil benefits those who have abused their position in the world, especially the Arabs and their religion, not to mention of few others. Anything we can do to get them out of our wallets will help to keep them and Islam out of our lives.
Of course I will miss never getting to drive a muscle car again, but I can live without it. You have to admit, 0-60 in 4 seconds silently is pretty cool.

[daviddennis]

John, It seems likely that the Tesla folks might have created a car that was substantiatlly lighter than the Boxster, thus giving better mileage. Of course this means that if we imported a Lotus Elise into the US it could have the same impact. And indeed, I was in error and you can buy one, for about the same price as the Boxster. The car weighs 1975 pounds and gets 22/29 mpg versus 20/26 for the Boxster. So it looks like there is not much difference in mileage one way or the other.

I seem to remember a proposal suggesting that there be lower rates for overnight use of power, such as electric car charging. I have no idea where those ideas went but it's certainly possible this would help the situation and something like that might have been factored into their estimates.

We'll see how well it lives up to its claims once the cars are released. Obviously the target market isn't going to be too worried about running costs, so it seems curious that they made such unlikely claims.

Their web site is very nicely done and well worth visiting. It's http://www.teslamotors.com .

Eagle, I think it's worth letting you know that pretty much every product, from cars to computers, starts up as something only the superrich can afford, and then filters down gradually. For example, a decade ago, there was no such thing as a digital SLR camera. Six years ago you could buy one from Kodak for $15,000. My first digital SLR cost over $3,000 with lens and memory card. Now you can buy a very similar camera for $899. As the years go by and those products continue to be more mainstream, we will see the prices continue to drop.

So you should understand that it's very good that there are people like Sergery Brin of Google, who will no doubt buy one of these. This supports development and helps bring the price down for everyone in the future. Without these "early adopters" we would have nowhere near the variety of products we enjoy today.

This car is just a taste of what's to come ... and the future looks very bright for such vehicles if battery prices can be brought down.

D

[daviddennis]

Well, I blew that one! They are claiming 1c per mile, not 2 or 3, and their source is PG&E off-peak rates. Here's is the explanation on the bottom of their web site main page:

MPG is for the EPA highway driving cycle. Conversion from electric consumption to gallons of gasoline equivalent is calculated using the EPA conversion factor documented in the Federal Register: June 12, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 113), Rules and Regulations, Pages 36985-36992. Cost calculated using PG&E Schedule E-9 off-peak rate.

So apparently there are already special prices for this kind of electricity use and so you would wind up with something close to the $ 0.039 rate you cite. Since that gave you $ 0.06 per mile, I think we can agree that this sports car will cost far less to operate than any other equivalent vehicle.

D

[ThinkDifferent]

Like I said, I'm not an environ, just someone who wants to let the Arabs stew in their own oil.

Exactly. This issue should unite liberals and conservatives. It's also encouraging that rational environmentalists (yes, there are some) are starting to come around on nuclear power.

[capt. norm]

What Tesla did see about power distribution was that Edison's DC didn't go very far whereas with AC you could use transformers to boost the voltage and lower the current to make distant distribution possible.

Of course with DC transformers are not possible.

I always picture him as someone like Christopher Lloyd because he definitely had "toys in his attic".

[Zeroisanumber]

I always had one question about electric cars, how does the pollution created generating the electicity to charge them compare to a gasoline-burning engine capable of the same performance?

Should cut down on emissions quite a bit, much less smog for certain. Hell, switch over to a nuke-based energy grid and emissions go down to nearly zero.

[Rca2000]

But you must remember....to the enviros(and many "everyday" types) --the very mention of word "nuclear", is the equivalent to the word "holocaust".

Instead--they imagine that solar power, wind power and geothermal power ill answer everything. Even though the BEST , most optimistic estimates for "renewable" energy sources being able to supply the earth's power needs is::: FIVE percent!!

[Bokababe]

"So a bunch of Left-Coast leftists end up sitting in the dark with no AC... "

I never heard that term "Left-Coast" until I moved East (from CA) for a few years.

Everyone, including Californians, have forgotten that California was once the home of the John Birch Society!

[Zeroisanumber]

5% is still power for 500M people. But I agree with you that right now alternative sources are, at best, a supplemental source of power. Nukes are expensive to set-up but cheap to run, and we aren't going to run out of Uranium anytime soon.

[Zeroisanumber]

Everyone, including Californians, have forgotten that California was once the home of the John Birch Society!

Probably better that way. If I remember correctly, their founder was convinced that Ike was a secret agent for the communists.

[John Jorsett]

So apparently there are already special prices for this kind of electricity use and so you would wind up with something close to the $ 0.039 rate you cite. Since that gave you $ 0.06 per mile, I think we can agree that this sports car will cost far less to operate than any other equivalent vehicle.

I'm not so sure. The E-9 rate schedule for PG&E gives the lowest rate as $.049 per kwh off peak. But that's just for up to 130% of baseline. Above that, you get rates like $.14, $.22, on up to $.27. Unless the amount of energy that is considered baseline gets raised for those with an electric car, almost everyone will be paying to charge the car at the higher rates.