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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."
Tesla Roaster?
new battery powered kind of way to cook Turkey?
everything in moderation
It includes only "regular" air-bags, having an exemption from the "advanced" air-bag systems, which have been required in the United States since 1998. Such exemptions are common for compact roadsters, including Ferrari.
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Cars like the Tesla will never come down in price that much, and even if they did, you wouldn't be able to afford upkeep on the batteries (they use laptop cells; they pamper them, but even still, that LiCoO2 cathode is still going to kill the cells after several years). Tesla is simply not designed around low price; it's designed around performance and range for a high-end target customer.
Now, this doesn't mean that *EVs* won't come down in price. There are already a number of them coming out (see my post further down) with prices in the $25-30k range that'll give you 0-60 in 7-10 seconds and 100-120 miles range, with the whole range of modern safety and comfort features. They use less energy-dense variants of li-ion, such as phosphates and spinels, that have vastly superior lifespans that should last at least a decade, and probably last the lifespan of the vehicle. The batteries should also be cheaper once they enter mass production due to their much cheaper raw ingredients.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
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.
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?
Before anyone asks, 135 miles per gallon is 2 721 600 rods per hogshead.
And that's the way I likes it!
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!"
I'm a girl. I'm not into cars. I drive a low end toyota because it was cheap and gets great gas mileage. But. that. car. is. HAWT! I just need to convince 110,000 suckers to give me 1 dollar each.
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?