Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Motors Opens Retail Store
Tesla Motors has opened their first retail store front to allow the masses access to their new cars. Of course, this is assuming you can afford the $109,000 price tag. "The company told the Associated Press that it is impressed with demand: it has taken 600 orders for the Roadster and has a waiting list of another 400. CEO Elon Musk owns the first one produced. The fancy showroom near Beverly Hills takes its inspiration from Apple stores, Musk said. [...] The company plans to make a luxury sedan next year called the Whitestar that will come in two versions: an all-electric model that will run entirely on its lithium ion battery pack, and a range-extended vehicle that will also use liquid fuel to extend its range. The Roadster will have a range of 220 miles per charge and the mileage equivalent of 135 miles per gallon."
...of a store opening to sell something they have no inventory of, and have no hope of having inventory of for quite some time due to already existing waiting lists. Seems like an expensive way to just keep their name/product visible, opening a store that can't sell anything.
F1 cars don't have airbags.
Thousands of racing sedans don't have airbags.
Instead, the driver wears a safety harness that fits, sits in a seat that fits, and doesn't spend time hunched over sideways fiddling with the radio controls. And they only die in exceptional circumstances.
Airbags are, like many other "safety" inventions, needless complications foisted on the car-buying public at large because a small percentage of lawyers insist that, as an occupant of a vehicle, you should be protected from yourself, regardless of any lack of common sense you might exhibit in the car.
If there is a legal avenue by which carmakers can choose not to equip certain vehicles with airbags, then power to them.
Less is more.
The Tesla is shipping. The other ones are purely showroom wet dream concepts.
That is worth 109k if you ask me.
The masses can't afford a $100,000 car like you and Mr gates can.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
They are also professional drivers whose situation not only allows but forces them to put all attention on the task at hand (driving). The traffic they're in is also entirely made up of professional drivers whose situation not only allows but forces them to put all attention on the task at hand. And there are no pedestrians, wild animals, dropped matresses, or other foreign objects in general in their path.
This is not to say that the current state of regulation is necessarily right -- but the comparison to race cars is inane. The circumstances are totally different and so the safety concerns are totally different.
It's all well and good to ask why the law protects some idiot from his own mistake when he drives distracted. But did you ever notice how accidents often involve more than one car, and the other guy -- even if he's doing everything right -- is in harm's way, too? Again, intelligent people can argue about the government's role in regulating safety, but don't try to disguise the issue by pretending only idiots are in car accidents.
How cute! You actually believe that gas taxes are used to build and repair roads, rather than going into the general fund for congress to spend on whatever they please!
What, like being dumb enough to let a drunk driver hit you? Or silly enough to allow your brakes to fail? Ooh, or being too stupid to notice that deer! It's not a "protect[ion] from yourself thing," it's just a "protection" thing, same as your seat belt, safety windshield, center brake light, and a dozen other things. I'd be happy to let you drive a car without those safety features -- just sign this little card explicitly refusing taxpayer-funded ambulance and emergency room services. After all, why should those of us who can be bothered to pay for the bare minimum precautions be forced to support your dumb ass on life support?
So when was the last time you drove a two-seater roadster with extremely limited storage space more than 100 miles away from your home? Better yet, when was the last time *you* drove 100 miles away from your home? My point being, it doesn't happen every day for most people. Even so, you can charge the Tesla from a standard outlet if you're away from home. But a roadster (electric or otherwise) isn't exactly the best choice for a road trip anyway.
That said, I'm looking forward to the day that either A) I have the expendable cash to afford a car like this, or B) the technology filters down to more typical consumer-targeted cars.
Give it to The Stig, Give it to the Stig!!
I own a Prius, and I hate when you see some mod site say "get 120mpg with our extended battery pack". Oh and by the way you have to plug it into the wall using diesel generated power at $0.35 a kilowatt hour (I also live on Hawaii, power is hella expensive here). At electricity rates here most of these cars are more expensive to run than hybrid gas cars. We need a price per mile measurement. I realize that both gas and power fluctuate, but something similar to an energy guide on appliances. This car costs $.10 a mile on power at $.15 a kwH and gas at $4.00 a gallon. It's not ideal, but we need to quit letting these electric car makers get away with saying 135mpg. They may as well say "our all electric model gets infinity miles per gallon! It's the awesomest!"
Perhaps the government will start taxing your local coal or natural gas powered Electric concern to pay for the roads. One wonders how much interest there would be in electric vehicles when the taxes are figured in and it ends up being about the same operating cost as a conventional car.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I would point out the wit of the moderators of your post, but that might be insightful.
You, sir, are a very big contributor to global warming and the price of fuel. I sincerely hope you're not driving an Escalade.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Where does our electricity for our homes come from? Fossil fuels?
Electric cars are a great idea but unless the electricity to recharge their batteries is coming from a renewable resource I don't quite see how this really helps.
Instead of filling your car with gas, you're using coal/oil power plants instead. I don't see what the true benefit really is.
The fact that this car is in production, that there is now a showroom where the public - if not the 'masses' - can see production models in person, and that according to Motor Trend and Car & Driver the Tesla Roadster out-performs every other production car EVER in the 30-70mph range (where 95% of all 'sport' driving of sports cars takes place), and that the car has gone from concept to production in under 10 years, in addition to the fact that this is an all-electric vehicle, altogether makes this a positively ASTONISHING accomplishment. Add to that the fact this car is a proof-of-concept and is, by design, a logical stepping-stone toward a mass-market all-electric vehicle, and you've got one of the few genuine harbingers of the green technology future in action TODAY.
So fuck you assholes and your vaporware tags. Get out of mom's basement, grow some balls and some vision, and maybe - just maybe - you might one day have a shot at being involved in a project one tenth as exciting and momentous as this one.
A-Bomb
Why you would buy one of these when you could have a _real_ Elise and the interest on the difference would cover your fuel cost is beyond me.
Considering the technologies that the namesake Tesla was into, one small mistake and you get fied.
Once these LiIon powered cars are widely available, firefighters and other emergency responders are a little concerned about digging in to extract crash victims from twisted smoking piles of LiIon battery wreckage so maybe your name is an apt one.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Um, since money is fungible, is it possible to say what the money is "for" even when it's dedicated to its own "road repair fund"? If there were no gas tax, presumably Congress would still want just as much to repair the roads, so implementing such a tax effectively frees up the equivalent amount in the general funds. So whether or not there's a dedicated fund, you're still boosting the general fund (do you really believe your state wouldn't pay for schools if lotto weren't there?)
The way I think about it is that gas taxes are there *because* building and repairing roads is necessary. It's a disincentive that's proportional to the damage done, with only the nice side effect being that the money can be used to help repair it.
But don't bother listening to the AC economist...
ZAP is a hype company. The ZAP-X simply will never exist. They do these CG renderings talking about what they're going to do every time they need to drive prices up before splitting their stock. Then the hype-car magically disappears down the memory hole. All ZAP sells, and all they probably will ever sell, are underpowered, crummy-quality Chinese golf cars sold as cars and marked up 400%.
Phoenix has some good vehicles, but they're just too expensive for most people. If they can get their prices down, they'd definitely have a significant market. The problem is that they hitched themselves to AltairNano, who has been having problems getting the prices on their titanate cells down. $2/Wh is simply unacceptable.
I could list other cars I excluded. The WhiteStar, even if Tesla can bring it to market, is also targetted out of the price range of most customers. Subaru's R1e is priced well, but I find 60 miles range and a ~60mph top speed insufficient (now, if they were to release the G4e...). The Th1nk City is way too expensive for what you get once you factor in the battery rental fee; its stats are unimpressive to begin with. Nissan Renault hasn't been open enough about their offerings. I could keep going if you like.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
Because the current scenario, stepping into a crash site's puddle of highly flammable liquid, is just so much more appealing.
I hate printers.
Hmm let's see, Oh, "Not having to buy Oil from Saudis and Venezuelan dictator wannabe's ever again". No brainer!
That means you're paying $0.25 per mile just for the batteries---seven cents per mile more than my gasoline cost for a Ford Windstar...at my current PG&E rate of 33 cents per kilowatt hour, that comes out to $24.75 for that 220 miles, or an additional $0.11 per mile, for a grand total of a whopping $0.36 per mile---seven cents per gallon more than the average cost of driving a Lamborghini roadster....
For the EV, you're including long term matintencance costs in the per mile calculation. Are you doing the same for your Windstar?
" "Assuming you drive it 200 miles a day"
Wasn't the range 400 miles last year? Bloody laptop batteries never give what they promise.
(one has to wonder if one of those little drink-cooler looking Honda generators in the trunk or back might give you an extra few miles)
Need Mercedes parts ?
But not only that-- this also means that any method we have for producing electrical power is a candidate for powering vehicles. So large solar arrays, wind farms, hydropower, geothermal power, trash incinerators, and [whatever else] all gain the ability to power our transportation network. This allows us to diversify our energy consumption, making it less likely in the future that our economic stability will depend on those-who-control-the-oil.
I think that the electrical hazard is a bit overstated, though. I can't think of a reason why high-current electrical loads would be carried through the structures normally cut through by the jaws of life
If you need the jaws of life, it's safe to assume that there have been some modifications to the structure. You've probably voided your warranty too.
It wouldn't be that difficult to pass legislation doing just that. They could even just do it based on the panel size and your location (since the electricity generated could be roughly calculated from that information).
What are you going to do - hide your solar panels away out of sight of people and google earth?
Perhaps you might - but if you end up with some kind of hidden retracting solar collector, James Bond will probably come by and blow it up!