FAST electric car

[pdisme]

Wow, check this thing out:

http://www.teslamotors.com/images/nav/home_r1_c1.jpg

It's from http://www.teslamotors.com/ and costs about $93k.

http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/effic_v_perf.gif

Even the charging jack looks bad ass:

http://www.teslamotors.com/images/content/charging.jpg

It's a great looking car, I'd drive it. Wouldn't that be funny blowing by ricers in a car that doesn't make any noise?

[duc749r]

they cost around 100k? I want test drive one

[pdisme]

Once cent per mile operating expense is pretty sweet, my g-wagen costs me about 25 cents per mile between fuel and maintenance. :)

[duc749r]

wow .01 per mile, one of my ducati's cost around the price of your g-wagen per mile. how far can that car go on 1 charge?

[pdisme]

They claim up to 250 miles per charge, here's their example range chart with San Fran as center:

[duc749r]

oh good i can make it to my house in lake tahoe with out pulling over for a charge. lol

[pdisme]

Yeah, you just can't do anything for 8 hours after you get there unless you call a cab. :lol2:

[duc749r]

lol well thats just crap then. guess no one will be taking those on a road rally any time soon.

[pdisme]

You never know, you could install some type of quick change battery system and have trucks waiting for you every 250 miles. :)

[pdisme]

Oops, guess it charges quicker than 8 hours:

Its batteries charge in just three and a half hours, Tesla claims. The sports car has a two-speed clutchless transmission, but, because of the electric motor's high torque, either gear works equally well in most conditions, the company asserts.

[pdisme]

Tesla is just about here:

Tesla all-electric Roadster to hit road by year end
Late transmission change delayed launch, but CEO says $100,000 car will ship this fall.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- Tesla Motors' all-electric Roadster sports car will start rolling out to nearly 600 buyers lined up for the $100,000 vehicle by October or November, after a slight delay, the company's chief said on Tuesday.

"We will definitely ship in that time frame," CEO and co-founder Martin Eberhard told Reuters at a meeting of the Motor Press Guild, noting that the company had originally expected to begin deliveries during the summer.

The shapely two-seaters are being assembled by Lotus Engineering in England, with motors manufactured by Tesla in Taiwan and battery packs made in Thailand with 6,831 individual lithium ion cells from Japan.

A late change in the transmission vendor "was a big thing for us to do in the program, very painful, and one of the things that has driven us into a little later this year release of the car," Eberhard said.

The Silicon Valley-based Tesla has pre-sold 570 cars to the likes of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his wife Maria Shriver, and actor George Clooney. The company will make 1,000 2008 model year cars. The Roadster, which has a base price of $98,000, can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4 seconds and has a range of more than 200 miles on a single charge on a household plug.

Eberhard and co-founder Marc Tarpenning launched Tesla in 2003 with the idea of making a high-performance electric vehicle and then branching out to more affordable cars later on. Since then, Tesla has secured $105 million in funding, with PayPal founder and space industrialist Elon Musk leading the way and venture capital firms joining in recent funding rounds. With delivery of the car approaching, Eberhard said: "We have a lot more interest in investing in this company recently."

Eberhard said that if they just limited production to the Roadster, Tesla would be making a profit in 2008. "But Tesla's intention has always been to grow to be a full-fledged car company as quickly as we can do that," he said. "We are taking everything we earn from the Roadster and everything we have raised from outside sources to build the next model car."

The next car will be the White Star, a five-passenger sedan with a price point of $50,000 to $65,000, to be manufactured in New Mexico. "We are in the very early stages of it," said Eberhard, noting that he "would not place any bets" on a target of a 2010 model year.

That same year, General Motors Corp is supposed to launch the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric vehicle with a small combustion "range extender" engine. GM is shooting for a popular price, over $20,000, with a battery that costs around $3,000.

Tesla wants to keep moving down the chain to a more affordable car and could end up competing with the Volt. But Eberhard said he is skeptical GM's second attempt for an electric car will come to fruition, at least at that price point, mostly because of battery challenges.

"If I sell 10,000 White Stars, it will be a screaming success for me," he said. "But 10,000 Chevys sold would be a disaster."

Tesla plans to open two stores, in Los Angeles and in Menlo Park in Northern California, and will expand later to the U.S. East Coast and Midwest. Top of page

[Seb]

Its a cool car, but sadly will only be good for short range trips. Would be cool though if gas stations started offering "electric pumps".

[zzzzdoc]

Actually, with my driving habits, it would work. Wonder if I could tinker with it and increase the top speed.

Hmmmmm.........

[AgentTripleX]

I actually met someone familiar with the project first hand and the car may end up costing closer to 200k if and when it comes out. Something about lots of batteries. He also mentioned the car is quiet. You don't hear yourself accelerating so that may throw you and people around you off.

[SweetDaddyDelicious]

It's based on the Lotus Elise, which automatically makes it cool. lol.

XXX: That is weird about an electric car. I drove an electric Ranger pickup at a Ford test facility years ago. You turn the key, nothing happens. No sound or anything, take the foot of the brake and it moves. Mash the pedal to the floor and the thing just silently takes off (max torque at low RPM with electric motor so it took off pretty good) with good acceleration and no noise until there was enough wind to make noise or tire rotation. Very strange sensation. Since a motor was required to spin the power steering and AC pumps they made some noises. Really weird to have steering noise and no engine noise.

[zzzzdoc]

Still thinking about the Tesla. Not for $200K, but, hmmmm...

We'll see how the LS600hL goes. If I like the electric part of it, maybe a Tesla in my future. I virtually never drive 250 miles in a day. I could easily handle the range of the thing.

[pdisme]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1C44JQU7Pc

[artherd]

I saw one around Palo Alto about a week ago. Looked sweet and accelerated fast.

[Matt]

read somewhere that tesla is now claiming 300mpc. Either way, I'd be hard pushed to do a quarter of that in a day.

cool look though. kind of looks like an S7 meets RX7 meets new eclipse.

[pdisme]

Looks like they're finally shipping:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/05/03/electric.car.ap/index.html

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- It's safe to say Jeremy Snyder gets a charge out of the two-seat Tesla Roadster whenever he pulls one off the lot, and not because it's equipped with an all-electric engine.

As he pulled one of the sleek new automobiles down a side street Thursday and put the pedal to the metal, its lithium-ion battery-powered engine didn't give off sparks. It just emitted a powerful hum, like a much quieter version of a jet taking off.

"Accelerate pretty good?" asked Snyder, head of client services for Tesla, who knew the answer.

"I call it a turbine sound," he said of the sound. "Because it's an electric motor, it's got 100 percent torque all the time. So it just pulls you like when you're taking off in an airplane."

After several years of development, the Roadster -- with sleek lines like a Ferrari or Porsche and a sticker price of $109,000 -- moves from the drawing boards to the market next week when Tesla's first store opens. It's near the University of California, Los Angeles, in the city's tony Westwood neighborhood, where Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Hollywood practically intersect.

"Because it's Hollywood and glamorous, this is the flagship store," Snyder said.

The next store is to open in a couple months near Tesla's headquarters in the Silicon Valley city of San Carlos, where the car was developed with venture capital of more than $40 million from such investors as Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. More stores are planned for Chicago, New York and other cities by early next year.

Although a fully loaded model can set a buyer back as much as $124,000, that's still cheap compared with a high-end Ferrari. And its 6,831-cell lithium-ion battery pack gives off no emissions.

The car goes from 0 to 60 mph in just under four seconds and tops out at 125 mph. It goes 225 miles on one charge and can be fully recharged in 3½ hours, which Tesla officials say should allow most people to drive it to work and back and recharge it at night like a cell phone.

Driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco, however, would require stopping in, say, Fresno and plugging its adapter cord into a motel room wall socket.

Some critics have expressed concerns about the durability and safety of the lithium-ion battery, which weighs about 1,000 pounds, more than a third of the entire weight of the 2,700-pound Roadster, whose body is made up of carbon fiber materials. Tesla officials respond that the car has passed all required safety tests. They say the battery should last for about 100,000 miles of driving.

The company, formed in 2003, is named for inventor Nikola Tesla, a pioneer in the field of electricity. The people buying its cars so far, said national sales manager Doreen Allen, are celebrities, early adopters, wealthy people and environmentalists.

Tesla officials say Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, actors George Clooney and Kelsey Grammer and musicians Will.i.am and Flea have ordered Roadsters.

It will be a while before anyone can walk in and drive a Tesla home off a lot, however.

"Delivery is running about 15 months," Allen said, adding that the company was surprised by the demand.

Tesla began taking orders last year for the 600 Roadsters it planned to produce in 2008 and had sold all of them by October, Allen said. The first ones began rolling off the production line six weeks ago, and Allen said all of the 2008 models should be delivered to their owners by March. The first ones should begin going out the door this month.

Meanwhile, orders are being taken for 2009 models, with plans calling for production of about 1,500 cars.

Eventually Tesla also plans to produce cheaper family vehicles.

"There's a model in the works right now, a five-passenger sedan that will be styled comparable to the roadster but a lot roomier to accommodate families, and that is slated for 2010," Snyder said.