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."

Comments

Neat!

[KingSkippus]

I can't wait for these types of cars to hit mass production and come down in price so that us normal people can afford them.

That is what I'd call the ultimate "gas tax holiday."

Re:Neat!

[Hoplite3]

Also, companies like Tesla are training another generation of expert electrical vehicle engineers. It's quite likely that some will leave to start their own EV company down the road. One of them might be the Henry Ford of electrical cars.

As in making an affordable, more practical electrical vehicle for the masses, not as in winning the Order of the German Eagle or whatever Nazi medal Ford got in 1938.

Re:Neat!

[witherstaff]

You're right - the Aptera Even has a design with solar panels on the car itself.

I think the major advantage is that you can clean a power plant much easier than every tailpipe out there. Now if we just started getting more nukes started, with fast breeder tech that reduced the waste drastically, it'd be even better.

Re:Neat!

[tgd]

You should see what you pay in other taxes. Gas taxes pay for the roads (and the taxes are not high enough based on the state of the roads in most of the country).

What builders of EV and alternate fuel cars tend to learn the hard way is if you're not paying taxes on your fuel, you're breaking the law.

Most states have substantial (to the tune of $500 or more) additional yearly registration or excise taxes which have to be payed on pluggable EVs.

You're not going to escape the gas tax one way or another.

Meaningless phrase

[jamesl]

... mileage equivalent of 135 miles per gallon.

What is the conversion factor when going from "batteries charged off the grid" to "miles per gallon internal combustion gasoline engine?"

Re:Not entirely accurate either

[Rei]

Second, the roadster is expected to last about 100K miles before needing to have the batteries replaced.

Perhaps... assuming you drive it 200 miles a day. Laptop cells suffer serious time degradation. They *also* have cycle life limit problems, but that's the smaller of the two issues.

Third, while the current generations of LiIon have a limited set of charges, the research is extending this out all the time. A number of the other types which Tesla will no doubt buy patents rights for, will charge many more times than a 1000.

Yes -- phosphates, titanates, spinels, etc -- which I've been mentioning. And no, they won't buy the rights; there's no way they could afford them (except perhaps on titanates, since AltairNano is struggling... not sure it'd be a wise buy). And in some cases , such as the phosphates, who owns the rights is confusing enough. Almost everyone making reasonable-priced EVs right now is using phosphates, titanates, or spinels. Tesla is *behind* on this. I don't fault them; they need the better energy density, their customers can afford it, and when they started, these techs were less mature. But that doesn't change the fact that they're using something that's inferior tech for automotive applications.

Re:Not entirely accurate either

[dgatwood]

The problem is that even if they last 100,000 miles, the cost of the batteries is half the price of the car. It uses 6800 of the 18650 LiIon cells. These things are on the order of $7 apiece at the cheapest retail price. Even if they could get them for half that, you're still talking about almost $25,000 ever 100,000 miles (plus whatever profit they tack on). 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, and you haven't even factored in the cost of charging them.

Further, it takes 75 kilowatt hours of power to charge it, and a charge only lasts 220 miles. 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....

The fundamental flaw with all current electric cars is the LiIon battery cost/lifespan ratio. It needs to be increased by at least an order of magnitude for it to make sense compared with conventional cars. Whether that means the batteries come down to $2500 or last a million miles doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, though, I'm holding out for ultracapacitors. Chemical cells just aren't nearly robust enough for this sort of application.

Re:Heat?

[drinkypoo]

I can't be the first one to think: how do they plan to ever sell electric cars as daily drivers in regions of the country where it gets cold?

You aren't. The Tesla has a battery heating/cooling system. They actually bring the batteries rapidly up to temperature, then try to hold them there.

People always criticize the internal combustion engine for being inefficient, but the fact is that all that "waste heat" isn't wasted at all. You need it to keep the passengers warm. I live in New England, and I'd like to not freeze on my way to work.

Cars are 25% efficient or less before the drivetrain losses, drag, et cetera. Just the ICE is that bad. Charging a battery can be over 80% efficient, the electric motor is probably around 95% efficient... Anyway, most of that heat IS wasted. You think that a lot of engine heat is entering your car because it feels hot to you. But the radiator transfers several times as much heat as your heater core, and that doesn't even count the direct radiative losses from the block, heads, pan, and especially exhaust manifolds.

It'll be pretty hard to sell people around here on a "family car" that you can't use between October and May.

You mean, It'd - since your objection is based on an already-solved issue. Are you getting paid to badmouth the Tesla, or is sharing your ignorance just a hobby?

Re:hehe

[hey!]

Lithium ion phosphate technology is almost as good as Li-ion technology, and considerably safer.

Personally, I'd have not much more concern about driving a plain old Li-ion powered car than I have using a Li-ion laptop. Granted, the worst case scenario in a car is much more destructive of the battery, but it doesn't seem to be beyond the capabilities of engineering to render the risk of Li-ion to be on the same order of danger as gasoline or ethanol. If safety is so important, then we should be talking about Li-ion phosphate or NiMH.

What's holding things back in electric cars and plug-in hybrids are all the patents covering the kinds of things you'd need to do to produce large batteries. It's not so much a question of physical practicality than legal practicality, That's why we haven't seen the next logical step on hybrids: the plug-in hybrid. It's not possible to license the technology to scale the NiMH hydride batteries used in current generation vehicles to a size large enough to make the plug-in idea really work.

We're pretty close to being able to make reasonably versatile electric cars economically, and given the popularity of hybrids the plug-in hybrid is a no-brainer. If we don't see those technologies become practical for widespread use in the next decade, it won't be because the world lacks the engineering talent to do it.