Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars

jamie found the news that Tesla Motors is delivering roadsters in California. (We've been following developments on the Tesla front for a couple of years now.) According to a letter from the CEO, "9 production Roadsters have arrived in California, another 3 arrive this weekend, and they will keep arriving at the rate of 4 per week... In fact, currently there are 27 Roadsters in various stages of assembly." The early owners must be proud, but there could be complications.

Comments

Re:Title

[maxume]

Indistinguishable from sarcasm.

ok

[unity100]

then dont fuckin make use of the socialist retirement, minimum wage, weekly working hours, weekly holidays, yearly vacation days concepts. let go of those rights.

Re:so what happens when you DO run out on the road

[vlm]

You're confusing acceleration with cruise and confusing power vs energy and confusing full charge with "enough to get to the nearest commercial AC outlet"

Yes an average car "needs" hundreds of KW to go 0-60 in a couple heartbeats. But at cruise on a highway all you need is a couple hp. Even hill climbing doesn't require much electrical power, think of the tiny motors running a modern elevator. A typical car needs maybe a hp or so at normal (non-autobahn) cruise speeds. Notice your accelerator foot barely above idle on the highway... Half the time my foots off the gas completely.

The power and energy confusion relates to above. Sure when you floor it it draws 200 KW but it 4 seconds you get a speeding ticket. At cruising speed you may only need 1 KW to keep going. Perhaps in a desert the nearest gas station is 10 miles away. So worst case scenario is your tiny generator pumps in a KW for twenty minutes giving you around 15 "KW-minutes" (due to conversion losses, etc) and then you drain it out driving to the AC outlet consuming a bit more than 10 "KW-minutes"

The final confusion is no need to fill the battery completely to drive another 200 miles, you only need enough to get off the highway and to a power outlet.

Also try flooring your fiesta for more than one minute, it'll overheat and explode. Now marine, aircraft, and diesel train engines are designed to run full throttle forever. It's always amusing to compare a 1000 HP F1 racing engine that only survives 500 miles and I could wrap by arms around it, with a 1000 HP train engine that is literally roughly the size of a garden shed...