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I thinking the same thing.

For example there is AC Propulsion's eBox or what I really want a Telsa Roadster, which they claim gets an equivalent 135mpg.

100mpg is certainly do-able with off-shelf technology.

" fuel efficient = excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed "

Let's see, a Telsa gets about 135mpg (equivalent), 250 miles per charge, has a top end of over 130mph, and does 0-60 in 4 seconds. It's also about $90,000 at the moment, but 0-60 in 4 seconds is well into high-end Ferrari/Porsche/Lotus land. Point being that "fuel efficient" and "excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed" don't preclude one another.

It's also scheduled to go into production in about four months. Hmmm. Wonder why they haven't already won the prize?

Seriously, why bother? We have a solution to the pollution and mess that is our current transportation system:

1. Solar Panels.
2. Lithium Ion Batteries.

Or you can continue building crappier cars that continue to burn our ever dwindling rotten dinos, at ever decreasing rates.

Here's my bibliography:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics
2. http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

So, your saying that I have to buy this car before my less fortunate neighbors can get high speed Internet?

Honey, but I just have to buy that $100,000 electric sportscar. It's the socially-responsible thing for us to do!

No, there is something much more effective. It's called High Barrier to Entry, and it is extremely effective at keeping out small car manufacturers, with expensive safety tests and regulation compliance

The way to make money in the car business (like any other) is to make sales. In GMs case they do this through a dealership network. The dealership network makes almost no profit from the initial sale of the car, and nearly all of the profit through service and maintenance, in which they sell small products at ridiculous markups. When GM trialled the EV1, the dealerships realised that an electric motor has very little maintenance costs, and so there was no profit in selling them.

If you radically change your manufacturing process to produce a better car, you lose your investment in the current equipment

Bzzzt, wrong, but thankyou for playing.

What? Who is modding this up? It's the same old tired argument against any kind of innovation. Come on people, value your mod points. http://teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectr icCar.pdf

Hey, as it happens, I recently saw just such a comparison!

http://teslamotors.com/learn_more/energy_efficienc y.php

This is a well-to-wheels comparison...I'm not sure which way changing it to pump-to-wheels would skew things, although my guess would be in favor of the diesel. But I think well-to-wheels is what we should really be interested in anyhow. In any case, the comparison naturally shows the company's own Tesla Roadster as far and away more efficient than the others in the list...and their argument is fairly convincing. But it also does show the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic VX (the two hybrids in the list) as slightly more efficient than the diesel Jetta. It is worth noting that the fuel-cell and natural-gas cars performed terribly.

If you haven't checked out Tesla's site, you should...it's really cool. Here's hoping that batteries get cheaper and their production ramps up as fast as they expect, so these can get into reasonable price ranges. Oh, and here's hoping the lithium doesn't run out ;-)

The "long tailpipe" argument has completely dried up by now, yet every time there's an EV story on /. or digg, about 40 people bring it up. Please actually look into your argument before you slap it all over the web. http://teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectr icCar.pdf

I can't wait for electric vehicle technology to mature. I'd gladly trade my Talon TSi in for a http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1T esla Roadster, if they can overcome a couple of technical problems. While the recharging problem has been more than adequately addressed in this and other /. threads, I have a few questions that I haven't seen anyone else ask.

How do electric cars handle extremes in temperaturs? I know here in Anchorage, if I leave my headlights on overnight in the summer, my car will almost always start just fine. OTOH, in the winter, when temps are somewhere around 5-10, leaving the headlights on for just a couple of hours will discharge the battery enough to require a jump start. So......how well do electric cars hold their charge when temps are 0-20 degrees? Do the batteries work well enough in the cold to get back and forth to work, run a few errands, etc.?

On the other hand, there are problems with hot climates, as well. My mom recently was looking at a Ford Escape (?) hybrid. My uncle, who works at a Ford dealership, talked her out of the hybrid and convinced her to buy a conventional Escape, instead. She lives in Texas, and my uncle told her that the hybrids *never* turn the gas engine off in the summer in Texas, because the air conditioner draws too much power. So, while theoretically the hybrid should be more fuel efficient than a gas-powered vehicle, in the south, they actually get *worse* gas mileage than a conventional vehicle.

Finally, at this time, batteries are heavy. How much energy is wasted accelerating (I'm guessing) several hundred (thousand?) pounds of batteries all the time? By comparison, my Talon carries about 100 pounds of fuel and a 300 pound (guessing again) engine. Then the frame of the car has to be heavier to support the weight of the batteries, the brakes have to be beefier to provide adequate stopping power, etc. It takes more energy to accelerate all that extra mass, so how much more efficient are electric cars?

Don't get me wrong--I like the idea of electric vehicles, and I'd love to move away from powering my rice rocket with dinosaur bones, but I think I'll probably wait a little longer for electric technology to improve before I make the switch

Europeans will pass laws to protect the business of the gas stations. They are more afraid of the destructive impact of new technology than its promise.

Exxon et al cannot prevent people from buying electric cars. If the electric product is superior, it will be used.

I highly recommend the Tesla Motors web site - http://www.teslamotors.com/ as an example of a compelling electric car that's already sold out its production for the next year - at $100k a pop. They plan to extend their line to cheaper vehicles in the next couple of years.

Reading of their blog and comments are especially recommended.

D

People are already making very practical electric cars using existing off the shelf battery technology from laptop computers.

Be careful. Slashdot has been running lots of stories that are "investment opportunities". Read this, the first comment to the story linked from the Slashdot story. I didn't write it, it was written by someone with the nick Emosson, but it sounds correct. (Also, read the other comments showing skepticism of the idea.):

"Unfortunately EEStor never made and will never make the supercapacitor described in the patent because they ignore a well known physical effect, called "dielectric saturation".

"Barium titanate has been used in capacitors for decades, due to its high dielectric constant: (PDF file).

"However, the dielectric constant drops as the electric field strength increases: http://www.nap.edu/books/NI000488/html/49.html
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v71/i12/p890_1

"At a hypothetical field of 3500 Volts over a thickness of 12.76 micrometers, as proposed in the patent, the dielectric constant of barium titanate would be orders of magnitude lower than the claimed 18500, reducing capacity and energy density by the same factor...

"This has been discussed in more detail by Prof. Anatoly Moskalev on December 24th and 26th, 2006 in
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=43

"with an update on January 20th, 2007:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=46."

Also read this comment considerably below:

"Further evidences of EEstor's hype! by Roger Pham 1/22/2007 10:41 PM

"In his patent #7033406, Richard Weir, EEstor CEO, cited data published WAY BACK in 1985 from the Japan's Journal of Applied Physics, as basis for the high dielectric property of Barium Titanate (BaTiO3)powder, when coated with aluminum oxide and calcium magnesium aluminosilicated glass. If BaTiO3 capacitor was so good way back in the 1985, the likes of the GM EV1 would be around evey street corners since 1996, or the Prius would have been a PHEV way back in 1997!

"What held back coated BaTiO3 powder from becoming a SuperCapacitor was the fact that BaTiO3 has dielectric property that varies by nearly ten folds with just typical seasonal swing in ambient temperature, and the fact that its dielectric property drops by as much with high electrical field strength, as Emosson has brought up!"

Be careful. Slashdot has been running lots of stories that are "investment opportunities". Read this, the first comment to the story linked from the Slashdot story. I didn't write it, it was written by someone with the nick Emosson, but it sounds correct. (Also, read the other comments showing skepticism of the idea.):

"Unfortunately EEStor never made and will never make the supercapacitor described in the patent because they ignore a well known physical effect, called "dielectric saturation".

"Barium titanate has been used in capacitors for decades, due to its high dielectric constant: (PDF file).

"However, the dielectric constant drops as the electric field strength increases: http://www.nap.edu/books/NI000488/html/49.html
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v71/i12/p890_1

"At a hypothetical field of 3500 Volts over a thickness of 12.76 micrometers, as proposed in the patent, the dielectric constant of barium titanate would be orders of magnitude lower than the claimed 18500, reducing capacity and energy density by the same factor...

"This has been discussed in more detail by Prof. Anatoly Moskalev on December 24th and 26th, 2006 in
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=43

"with an update on January 20th, 2007:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=46."

Also read this comment considerably below:

"Further evidences of EEstor's hype! by Roger Pham 1/22/2007 10:41 PM

"In his patent #7033406, Richard Weir, EEstor CEO, cited data published WAY BACK in 1985 from the Japan's Journal of Applied Physics, as basis for the high dielectric property of Barium Titanate (BaTiO3)powder, when coated with aluminum oxide and calcium magnesium aluminosilicated glass. If BaTiO3 capacitor was so good way back in the 1985, the likes of the GM EV1 would be around evey street corners since 1996, or the Prius would have been a PHEV way back in 1997!

"What held back coated BaTiO3 powder from becoming a SuperCapacitor was the fact that BaTiO3 has dielectric property that varies by nearly ten folds with just typical seasonal swing in ambient temperature, and the fact that its dielectric property drops by as much with high electrical field strength, as Emosson has brought up!"

Geez, why can't they make an eco-friendly car 'look' nice and exotic? Make it look sleek and sporty. Can't they make it look nice like a new mustang, a vette, porsche...or hell, stick it in the frame of a new miata....

I think this is what you are looking for.

The Tesla Roadster http://www.teslamotors.com/, not cheap or readily available, are attractive cars and are quick too. Once again, when more cars like this are sold from more manufacturers, the prices will go down, just not anytime soon.

Besides that, there's another interesting feature of Tesla Roadster that's puzzling; it's autonomy. Tesla claims a 250 miles range, and a full charge of 3.5 hours while Chevrolet Volt has a range of 40 miles and full charge goes up to 6.5 hours .
Also, the volumes occupied by the batteries are simmilar, Volt has 100 liters and the Tesla Roadster about 120 liters (if my calculations based on this pdf are correct).
So, from where does this difference appear ? How come Tesla can have a 250 miles range, while Volt only 40 miles ?

Besides that, there's another interesting feature of Tesla Roadster that's puzzling; it's autonomy. Tesla claims a 250 miles range, and a full charge of 3.5 hours while Chevrolet Volt has a range of 40 miles and full charge goes up to 6.5 hours .
Also, the volumes occupied by the batteries are simmilar, Volt has 100 liters and the Tesla Roadster about 120 liters (if my calculations based on this pdf are correct).
So, from where does this difference appear ? How come Tesla can have a 250 miles range, while Volt only 40 miles ?

Why are the modern cars of the jet set radio future always so ugly? Telsa Motors is doing right what everyone else is doing wrong.

Everyone knows global warming isn't really, jesus you guys. Ok, now stop laughing/crying and check out:

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

Is there any reason we couldn't invest in this and solar RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW?!?

rhY

Don't look at it as a car that will only go 40 miles before you have to plug it in again or add gasoline. That's really the wrong end of the telescope. Look at it as a car that will still go 40 miles after the gasoline is gone. The battery pack is cache, not main memory.

...and oil burned in a power plant is still more efficiently used than gas in a car.

I'll cite Tesla Motors (warning, PDF) research for that one.

The car can be fully recharged by plugging it in to a 110-volt outlet for about six hours, and the gasoline engine can get about 50 miles per gallon when producing electricity to run the car, GM said.

Ah, but you may be wrong about this!

The gene pool is not supplied by the people who succeed financially, who buy that lovely $1,500,000 house in Woodside or glorious $3,500,000 beach cottage in Newport Beach. People like that have between one and two kids, trending towards one. Or even zero.

They are no match for the deeply conservative, creationist couple in the Midwest that struggles to get by with a $96,000 house, drives a rusty pickup instead of a gleaming Tesla roadster and has six children.

It's the people who have six kids who determine the gene pool. And they are the "resistant to change" types, not the "embrace change" types. In fact, many of the "embrace change" types have embraced the "zero population growth" idea halfway to extinction.

That might have been a bit too deep for this discussion, but I think it's something worth thinking about when you start talking about gene pools. The people you think are winning may in fact be losing. Big-time.

I'll bet a lot more Slashdotters are Tesla Roadster/Woodside house types than five children types. I know I am.

Anyway, on the much more trivial (but on topic) subject of the ribbon, I suspect this will at least somewhat reduce the use of keyboard shortcuts because they are not "in your face". At the same time, I remember that Word version 5.5 had a very easy to use style/formatting system and version 6 made it about double the complexity without any significant benefit. A return to a simpler style sheet system that's less confusing will help virtually everyone using Word.

I just hope they fix the crummy font rendering on the Mac. My favorite font (Optima) looks terrible in Word, glorious on Pages. Guess which word processor I use.

D

Generate electricity for these:

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/

or these:
http://www.teslamotors.com/

And everything else. Then you don't have to bugger about expending energy processing it the stuff into biofuels.

Well yes, if you combust it, it's comparable to gasoline, but if you're burning it you're still creating pollution. One of the main draws of hydrogen fuel cell technology is that it doesn't release any pollutants. What's the point of using hydrogen if you're going to burn it?

The other system you speak of is simple electrolysis, and is also extremely inefficient. You can power it using solar panels, or use the grid, but either way you get very low efficiency as opposed to, say, charging a battery. And the BIG problem with trying to use an electrolysis system at home is that you'd also need some way to liquefy the hydrogen. Otherwise, if you're storing it in a gaseous state, the average gas tank would take you maybe 80 miles if you're lucky.

My main point is that, for most consumer vehicles, batteries would be much more efficient than a hydrogen system. For instance, the Tesla Roadster uses a rechargeable battery pack, and is able to achieve a range of 250 miles per charge. Of course the big problem with battery powered cars is that they require time to recharge - in the case of the Tesla roadster, a full charge takes about 3 hours. This could be rather inconvenient if you're planning a 2,000 mile road-trip. But the overall efficiency is a hell of a lot better than any hydrogen vehicle, and the cost-per-mile is astronomically lower. A hydrogen vehicle would initially be more expensive to operate than a gasoline powered vehicle, and would at best at some point in the future achieve parity. So you'd still be paying the equivalent of $2.80 a gallon, or whatever you yanks are paying these days. Whereas with a battery powered car you'd be looking at spending between $0.01 and $0.05 per mile. For the average vehicle that'd be the equivalent of between $0.30 and $1.50 per gallon. Like I said, it's a HUGE difference.

While I completely agree with the parent, I wonder at the feasibility of producing biofuels on such a scale. I would love to see a super efficient production of biofuels from non-food sources.

On a slight tangent I have a real problem with the hydrogen fuel cells and even hybrids for vehicles when we can produce perfectly viable electric cars now. With the addition of new efficiencies in solar panels and personal windmills, we could conceivably make enough of our own electricity to charge our own cars.

Please don't forget that Tesla has a working Electric Roadster http://www.teslamotors.com/

> If the DOE Assistant Secretary thinks that electricity production has any meaningful impact on oil imports, the DOE is in trouble.
> With the possible exception of AK and HI, not much oil is burned for electricity generation in the US.

If you think that the cost differential between oil and electricity has no meaningful impact on oil imports, your reasoning is troubled. What energy application cannot change from oil to electricity, given economic incentives (which by the way will come naturally from market rules regarding scarcity and abundance of the two competing sources) ?

And if you are worried about oil used for transportation, don't:
http://www.teslamotors.com/

Let's hope these guys manage to grab a large part of the car market by 2020.

I see, well in that case I would not agree that I'm thinking of a "One Percent Doctrine", as an analysis is required to choose the right response.

As for reduced emission resulting in reduced freedom (I can only assume you mean mobility), I very strongly disagree. Our current use of energy for transport is so incredibly inefficient that there is vast room for improvement. Some of this improvement is already happening, but it's a slow process. I think Tesla Motors is a good example of technological advancement being applied to maintain our lifestyle by improving efficiency. Their's is a car that can run with the best, go a significant distance, and still has the potential for conveniece that were are used to.

I don't at all agree that we need to comprimise our lifestyle to optimize our energy efficiency, and the sooner we do it the better.

"In terms of raw energy consumption, the total amount of energy the US consumes as electricty from some source right now is within the same order of magnitude as the amount of energy we use burning gasoline in cars." Oh really? http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/foreign_oil. php

Forgive my formatting. visit http://www.teslamotors.com/ for what an electric car can do. Making it affordable is another story. GM had the chance in 1986 with the EV1 but they caved. Fortunately Honda and Toyota are selling hybrids.

Tesla motors details the advantages of say Lithium-Ion batteries as an energy-transport mechanism in their white paper "The 21st Century Electric Car". They say somewhere on their site that their 900 pound battery pack manages to store the equivalent of about 8 liters of fuel - not a lot, but their conversion efficiency being higher makes it go further. http://www.teslamotors.com/media/white_papers.php Martin Eberhard and Elon Musk seem like the dream team to me, the entire site is fun to read.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that's what the 5 minute at recharging stations are for. Probably running 440 or 480 directly off the power lines? At home I'm sure it will take longer. I also recall seeing something mentioned or implied about a "battery swap" at those stations, so perhaps the charging time is considerably longer, and the swap only takes 5m?

I also checked their patent, which seems like a reasonable decent use of a patent for a change provided it actually works. Think of the Tesla using this instead of 6381 exploding Sony batteries ;).

But more importantly, does this remind anyone else of the batacitors from Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld? If you could only charge them with lightning strikes - free power! ;)

A few more than that, actually. Roughly 1000lbs of them, in fact. http://www.teslamotors.com/

Sir, if they can make an all-electric and very sweet sports car with a range of 250 miles per charge, they can make a workable electric commuter car. Our energy grid needs an upgrade, period, and it needn't been a nightmare as it was with Enron's deliberate shenanigans.

I have a dream, and part of it is solar panels over the black asphalt of all our parking lots.

So now they're worried about global warming, eh? After all those years of pushing CNG to deal with all the other pollutants, now CO2 matters.

I've only seen one reference on this (the potentially biased white paper at http://teslamotors.com/display_data.php?data_name= 21stCentElectricCar but that paper claimed that CNG cars are actually worse than gasoline engines in terms of CO2 emissions per mile.

Does anyone else have a good source on this?

Now it appears it can outburn a Dell too. It is built using some 7000 laptop batteries.!!!

I can't wait until I can use this free energy to power my flying car and heat my aquarium of mermaids.

Flippancy aside, I'd be perfectly happy if it could power one of these flying cars for me...

...electric!

If price is no object, you should check out Tesla Motors's roadster. Although I believe a recent Wired article on the company stated they're planning a more average-joe sedan in the not-too-distant future.

Instead of us debating it I think we should just contact Tesla Motors at http://www.teslamotors.com/ to find out what the battery life curve is. I was under the impression that the batteries are easily disposable. Also it is about 2800 cells not 6000+. Also, remember, in addition to eliminating gas, there are no oil changes and disposal every 3000-5000 miles. The only oil in that is the tranmission fluid I believe. So, the environmental impact of changing oil also goes away with this car.

The discussion of "wheel-to-wells efficiency" in the Tesla Motors whitepaper seems compelling, only provided that batteries get cheaper as seems likely. Hybrid vehicles seem designed to create auto-maintenance-jobs, what a mess... http://www.teslamotors.com/media/white_papers.php

There's a great white-paper on Tesla Motor's site:

http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/white_papers .php?js_enabled=1

Basically, hydrogen sounds like it wont work, not in the near-term. On the other hand, new battery technologies are hopefully close at hand, like the ultra capacitors from EEStor. If we get this working, it could mostly eliminate our oil imports, and clean up the air. I posted a blog entry at:

http://www.billrocks.org/ideas/index.php?/archives /15-Saving-the-World-with-Electric-Cars.html

May I recommend taking a few minutes to read the Telsa white paper? It neatly summarizes most of the relevant facts about energy production, efficiency of the motor, charger and battery system, CO2 emissions compared to a Prius, etc. http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/white_papers .php But I suppose that would take all the usual fun out of debating from ignorance. :-(

> That 250 mile range estimate is probably at significantly lower speeds.

"The LiIon tzero will drive 250 miles in left lane traffic, in LA that means 75-80 mph.
Alan Cocconi (AC Propulsion founder and chief engineer) drove it to San Diego and back
without charging. On any type of standardized drive cycle it will go over 300 miles." link

> If I remember right, electric motor efficiency and power typically increase with load,
> but fall off with speed

"Efficiency: 90% average, 80% at peak power" torque chart

> 1000 pounds of batteries...are equivalent to about 1.5 gallons of gas (6.3 pounds/gal).
> Divide that by an efficiency of around 30% and you've got a 32:1 energy density ratio
> in favor of gasoline.

Internal combustion vehicles are about 15% tank-to-wheel energy-efficient. link
An all-electric vehicle is about 44% tank-to-wheels energy-efficient. link
The car's web site puts its efficiency at 2.2km/MJ, vs. 0.6km/MJ for the gas cars (see here).

So an electric vehicle needs to carry about 30% the energy of a gas vehicle.

Another way to look at this is to compare to the Lotus Elise, which consensus is saying is the closest regular car on the market. The Elise gets 25mpg, and so would need 10 gallons -- 63 pounds -- to travel 250 miles, giving us a ratio of 16-to-1 in required weight.

The fuel tanks on this Peterbilt model range from 40 to 150 gallons, with an apparent midpoint of 83 gallons, giving us 525 pounds of gas or 8320 pounds of batteries. The suspensions seem to cluster around 40,000 pounds, suggesting that batteries would need to replace about 20% of the max weight capacity of a truck in order to get the same mileage as a tank of gas (although that's not taking into account weight savings in the engine and similar components).

That's a lot -- it's probably 25-30% of the freight capacity of the truck. Batteries are dense, though, so it'll take up little of the truck's volume, potentially making the result feasible for cargo that is more limited by volume than by weight. Still, I think it offers a good argument that long-haul trucking is likely to stay a liquid-fuelled activity for the forseeable future.

> That 250 mile range estimate is probably at significantly lower speeds.

"The LiIon tzero will drive 250 miles in left lane traffic, in LA that means 75-80 mph.
Alan Cocconi (AC Propulsion founder and chief engineer) drove it to San Diego and back
without charging. On any type of standardized drive cycle it will go over 300 miles." link

> If I remember right, electric motor efficiency and power typically increase with load,
> but fall off with speed

"Efficiency: 90% average, 80% at peak power" torque chart

> 1000 pounds of batteries...are equivalent to about 1.5 gallons of gas (6.3 pounds/gal).
> Divide that by an efficiency of around 30% and you've got a 32:1 energy density ratio
> in favor of gasoline.

Internal combustion vehicles are about 15% tank-to-wheel energy-efficient. link
An all-electric vehicle is about 44% tank-to-wheels energy-efficient. link
The car's web site puts its efficiency at 2.2km/MJ, vs. 0.6km/MJ for the gas cars (see here).

So an electric vehicle needs to carry about 30% the energy of a gas vehicle.

Another way to look at this is to compare to the Lotus Elise, which consensus is saying is the closest regular car on the market. The Elise gets 25mpg, and so would need 10 gallons -- 63 pounds -- to travel 250 miles, giving us a ratio of 16-to-1 in required weight.

The fuel tanks on this Peterbilt model range from 40 to 150 gallons, with an apparent midpoint of 83 gallons, giving us 525 pounds of gas or 8320 pounds of batteries. The suspensions seem to cluster around 40,000 pounds, suggesting that batteries would need to replace about 20% of the max weight capacity of a truck in order to get the same mileage as a tank of gas (although that's not taking into account weight savings in the engine and similar components).

That's a lot -- it's probably 25-30% of the freight capacity of the truck. Batteries are dense, though, so it'll take up little of the truck's volume, potentially making the result feasible for cargo that is more limited by volume than by weight. Still, I think it offers a good argument that long-haul trucking is likely to stay a liquid-fuelled activity for the forseeable future.

The person who suggested that the Tesla Roadster uses "laptop batteries" is incorrect. The high-performance sports car does use Lithium-Ion batteries (Li-ion), but they're not "laptop batteries." The person who suggested that batteries needed to be replaced annually is incorrect as well. The batteries have a finite life, but it's not "one year." The person who suggested that the Roadster could go 0-60 in three seconds is optimistic by one second. The actual 0-60 time is estimated at 4 seconds. If you have more questions, please feel free to ask. Gov. Schwarzenegger and a number of reporters, photographers and customers/potential customers for the car went for rides last night. And for the people who claim that "eBay" is behind this car, that's not accurate either. Elon Musk, who was a co-founder of PayPal, is the major investor in Tesla Motors. The company is not seeking other investors. Martin Eberhard is the CEO of Tesla Motors. For the person who suggested that a "real" Tesla car would have a wireless microwave source, the company's name has nothing to do with any of Nikola Tesla's experiments, but honors a scientist who made early breakthroughs in electricity. For more information on the company, please visit http://www.teslamotors.com/ .

Why don't you do yourself a favour and read Tesla Motor's website? They explain why it's named "Tesla": because it uses motor first devised by Tesla himself: one based on induction.