Test Driving the Tesla Roadster

stacybro writes "Wired has an article about the Tesla Roadster. It is similar to other electric cars that we have seen in that the electric engine's serious torque will allow it to do 0-60mph in about 3 seconds. Part of what is different about this is that they are using over 6,831 laptop-type lithium-ion batteries. They are claiming the range is about 250 miles. As the battery tech for laptops improves, so will the range of these cars. The car will run about $80,000, which is about par for an exotic two-seater. So who is doing the poll on which tech CEO will be seen driving one first? My guess is one of the Google or E-Bay guys, since they are investors. It is nice to see more companies serious about helping to getting rid of our oil dependency. It is odd that the big car companies aren't more on this track!"

Comments

Wrong Name for Car

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This car is not a true Tesla Car.

If it were, it would have no batteries at all. Instead it would gets it energy from some kind of wireless source like microwave power transmission or even the Earth's magnetic field.

Re:Electric Cost Per Mile is Cheaper

[rsclient]

OK -- here's some basic terminology:

a "cell" is the fundimental unit of a battery. A "D" battery contains one cell -- and indeed, in old books was just called a "D cell" and never a "D battery". The "cell" is the fundimental battery unit because of chemistry.

A "battery" contains a bunch of cells. The actual word "battery" means "a bunch of identical things" -- so that a bunch of cannon all grouped together (for example) is a "battery" -- hence the existance of "Battery Park" in New York.

Thanks to the average person's inability to keep these concepts seperate (and the lack of a reason why they should be seperate), "battery" is now used to mean either a battery in the old-fashioned sense OR a cell in the old fashioned sense (but only if the cell is, as it were, individually wrapped). Once again crystal clear tech language is subverted. (Note to self: don't go on a wild tangent about dumb terminals)

The "battery" in your laptop contains a bunch of cells -- I see from Google that at least some laptops use batteries of 12 cells. The "batteries" in the Tesla contains exactly one cell and would be better termed "cells", except that (per above) language is changing.

A big chunk of the cost of buying batteries for your laptop are:
1. You aren't buying in bulk. Bulk is lots cheaper.
2. You are also buying specialized circuitry that inside of the
3. Expensive plastic

I would expect that your 90%-off-in-bulk isn't high enough. Add in another by-twelve factor, and the price-per-year drops even more.