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.

[RetiredSWO]

The big question for LA & SF is how long can
it sit in a traffic jam before going dead.

[Leto]

Remember a few things. This is the first cut of this technology. As production expands and the technology is developed cost will come down.

The 0-60 of this puppy is better thatn the 0-60 of the Lotus with a 190 hp engine. Comparable to A ferrari.

Combined with Nuke power this becomes a vialb ealternative over the long run. interesting stuuf. Just the ifrst step.

[Bokababe]

Yes, it is. But CA has such a Lib rep everywhere in the country. Yet that is not where we came from.

[bruinbirdman]

"The little Sparrow in #51 is $25,000 base."

If it has a place for my golf clubs, the think the course superintendent will let me use it. Is it air conditioned?

The Scion starts at $14k

Course, it ain't electric.

yitbos

[defenderSD]

I think this type of car is going to be a huge seller when they get the price down to $40K and bring out a mini-van and a small SUV version. I hope this company stays independent or is acquired by a company that is committed to developing and commercializing this technology. The biggest drawback to this type of car is the limited range between charges, but this should be a big seller to commuters as a second vehicle. People in the western US who drive 50+ miles each way to work are spending a lot on gasoline these days and this kind of vehicle will save them a lot of $.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

In your post # 39 you say: " gallon of gasoline yields 115,000 BTUs". You then compare that directly with the cost of an equivalent amount of electrical energy (assuming 100% efficiency for the electricity).

Actually, the losses in the charger, battery storage, and motor would yield an efficiency of about 75% for the electric vehicle. However, a gasoline IC engine is only about 35% efficient (at best) and a diesel engine about 40% efficient. Therefore, electricity is cost-competitive against gasoline at about $1.25/gallon. (BTW -- we pay well over US$3.00/US gallon for gas in Canada.) Of course, there are excise taxes on gasoline and none on electricity. If electric cars become popular, governments will figure out a way to rectify that by somehow also taxing electric vehicles. If the taxes were equalized, the cost advantage of electricity would be reduced significantly.

The biggest advantage of electric cars is that there is a wide variety of ways to generate the electricity -- therefore the dependency on oil would be reduced.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Ping

[devolve]

[The Red Zone]

And when you wanted to turn out the lights, you had to turn out ALL the lights.

[Constantine XIII]

Wow, it even looks cool...we might have a winner.

[Banat]

True. I've read that he would never shake hands with anybody and would carry his own silverware to receptions/dinners. I don't he cared much for money and/or glory.

[RetiredSWO]

0 -> 60 don't mean a thing if you are stuck in traffic draining your batteries.

[Dixie Yooper]

"if you are stuck in traffic draining your batteries"

You need to go golfing and ride in an electric cart. When the cart is sitting still, it's off. When you depress the accelerator it turns on. They even have the gas golf cars working that way, unlike gas powered automobiles which do tend to suck gas when your sitting in traffic.
Of course if your stuck in traffic and listening to your radio or have the heat/ac on your going to be using power.

[Dixie Yooper]

They also have an at home solar kit for recharging your car. They claim it produces more than your car will use.
Another option they provide is buying into their solar farm grid. I expect this is for CA only right now.

[Dixie Yooper]

After checking out the website, I noticed they don't offer an amplified exterior sound system the reproduces the engine sounds of a Ferrari interactive with the accelerator.
An option worth a few thousand dollars!!

[FormerLib]

Should cut down on emissions quite a bit, much less smog for certain.

But I haven't seen any evidence of that, only that the pollution itself will be transferred from wherever the car is to the power plant producing the electricity...less grid loss, of course.

And Californians sing "No nukes!"

[Dixie Yooper]

"But I haven't seen any evidence of that, only that the pollution itself will be transferred from wherever the car is to the power plant producing the electricity...less grid loss, of course."

If you consider how much energy it takes to pump oil out of the ground, pump it though a pipeline, pump it onto a supertanker, propel it with diesel engines from Kuwait/Saudi Arabia to Shreveport,LA, pump it off of the supertanker into a holding tank at the refinery which use a little bit of energy to convert crude into gasoline, pump it through another pipeline, pump it onto tanker trucks that need to power themselves down the road to your favorite gas station which pump it into your car or truck, you will have created some emissions before even starting your engine. Also your putting money into the hands of a few people(nice people) in the business of getting all of this to you not to mention the tax dollars involved.
And I'm not even an enviro nut. I'm sure they could shed even more light on your concerns.

[Fighting Irish]

Why does the mileage ruffle anyone's feathers? Just drive one of these sweet rides down to the Philadelphia shipyard, wiggle your nose and *W*H*A*M* ..... you're in another part of the country. With any quantum luck you'll be someplace you've always wanted to visit ... all on one charge!

[any references to the Philadelphia Experiment in this post are mere coincidence]

[FormerLib]

So you think the electicity-generating end of things requires much less energy?

It's pretty much the same.

Electric cars appear only to shift the source of pollution away from the personal transportation end of things.

[Dixie Yooper]

"So you think the electicity-generating end of things requires much less energy?"

Yes I do or I wouldn't have used one of my all time longest sentences to explain what it takes to get 60% of the gas we use into our cars. The other only 40% looses out on the boat ride. By far, the largest electric energy sources in the United States are from Nuclear and Hydro sources. The environs are not happy about either, but if you make enough people suffer in the heat and dark long enough, even the goofiest ones will break down and cry for more power plants and dams.
If we don't do something very soon about allot of things, the Arabs and Chinese will own our energy sources and it won't matter what our opinions are on how we get from point A to B.