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New Video of Tesla's Mass-Market Electric Car
Slatterz writes "The Tesla Roadster has almost mythical status among electric car enthusiasts. It's fast, with high torque over a wide RPM range, and can beat a Ferrari in terms of acceleration. Now Tesla has released new video of its upcoming new electric car, called the Model S, which Tesla Motors claims is the world's first mass produced fully-electric vehicle. Unlike the Lotus-Elise based Roadster, the Model S is a traditional sedan of the type millions of commuters might actually drive. Tesla claims it will fit seven people (if two of them are 'children under 10'), and has mounted a rather large 17in LCD in the dash. Key to Telsa's future will be the evolution of lithium-ion battery technology. Tesla Motors claiming the new Model S can travel up to 300 miles on a single charge, but the battery will still take 45 minutes to quick-recharge." (And for those in countries where it matters, this article mentions that it should also be available in right-hand drive.)
At $50,000 do they think it is too expensive to call it the model T? Do they think calling it the model T would be too arrogant? Maybe the next one will be cheaper and then they will go ahead and give it the next name. After all we would all like to see the model T version of the electric car that will get us off of expensive oil.
It's great to see an electric car this cool for so cheap. I mean, $50k isn't cheap, but it's cheap in comparison to their other car, an it seems generally more practical. If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.
I'm wondering, though, does anyone know what kind of profit margin Tesla is getting on these? Is the government subsidizing these at all (for environmental reasons)? Are they in the sort of situation where, as they start selling, Tesla will enjoy economy of scale and prices will go down substantially? Or is this price pretty firm?
300 miles will take some 4 hours to drive, you could prob do with at least a 45 min rest ... so this is finally acceptable range for an electric car.
Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving it a usefully long range
Why would you assume they can trade battery life for low end torque? One property of electrical engines is they allow for faster acceleration on the low end. It's not like they can somehow get rid of this acceleration while still having an electrical motor with the same top speed and I don't see how they can get more battery life out of the same either.
It's about the torque. Those electric motors have full torque when they start moving, unlike the internal combustion types that need to spin up to a certain RPM to maximize torque. The transmission tries to even this out, but with an electric, you just have more acceleration from a stop by the nature of the design. I'm more interested in how fast they can go from 60-100 mph, like when you need to pass someone. In theory it would be similar, but not better.
If I had the money, it would be a no-brainer for me. Since I don't have the money, it's still a no-brainer, but on the side of "no".
> Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving
> it a usefully long range?
This is electric, not gas. That isn't a tradeoff. Any electric motor capable of acceptable performance at highway speeds will accelerate very well: it's the way electric motors are. If you put in a feeble motor barely able to go 65mph on the level you would only gain a little range, and nobody would buy it. And it could still lay rubber.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
$50.000 ~ 35.000 euros Tesla model S looks like a luxury sedan. The same money would buy you a low end Mercedes or BMW in Europe, but with nowhere near the performance of 0-60mph in 5 seconds. For that kind of performance you would probably have to go with a turbo-charged compact, but the fuel economy is gone and you won't have the same interior space. If the numbers they advertise are true, it's quite a cheap car to buy, all things considered.
They aren't an established company like GM or Ford, it makes sense for them to start out with high-end customized vehicles, grow large on that, and then slowly descend into the mass market as economies of scale start to kick in. There's no other good business model that does not require eight digits of initial capital.
The article is optimistic in my opinion.
Let's assume they're talking about the same pack as in the Roadster (even though the pack you get for $57.4K is lesser capacity). That means you're putting in 45kWh in 10 minutes. That's a charge rate of more than 270kW. That will require 440V power (3-phase) at 600A! And that's assuming 100% efficiency!
There's going to be a lot of places where you can't get that much power. And even if you can, the amount of waste heat giving off by the charger, and in the pack will be very difficult to manage. Also, the charging cable would be a bit of a hassle to wrestle because it's going to be very thick.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So the Tesla Roadster actually has better acceleration than the Rapide, and considering Wikipedia quotes the Rapide at $240k USD compared to the $110~120k USD for the 2009 Roadster, I'd say the roadster wins on bang for buck there. The Model S in tfa is set to cost ~$49k USD and is still one helluva luxury car. And more than just the initial price, the Model S (supposedly according to Tesla marketing anyway) will cost only $4 dollars to fully recharge from empty.
I could probably rant all day, but the point is, the offerings from Tesla Motors puts an electric car with performance as high as the gas equivalent in the price range of mere mortals and doesn't require you to be an Apple stock millionaire or sell your ocean front property just to buy the damned car...
STOP THAT NONSENSE! Lithium is CHEAP. You can extract it from the saltwater for $50-70 per kg. if all else fails, but right now it's just easier to buy it for $20 per kg. in Bolivia.
Lithium so far is SO CHEAP that it makes no sense to make geological surveys specially for it.
Also, it's almost perfectly recyclable.
A (wealthy) friend had his delivered recently. Here's my twisty road test report.
Executive Summary: Oh. My. God.
Systems Lacking: 4-point harnesses, sufficient handholds for passenger, automated system to maintain directional control during GLOC on launch, earplugs to block whimpering sounds from passenger seat
Top Gear is full of it. I own a Tesla Roadster and regularly get 180-200 mile range with ordinary driving, and the car recharges empty to full in 3.5 hours on the fast charger.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Lithium scarcity is one of those myths that just won't die. It's based on a few misguided notions: 1) that lithium makes up most of a lithium-ion battery (it doesn't); 2) it's its most expensive element in a lithium-ion battery (it isn't); and 3) a gross misunderstanding of how reserve figures work.
In reference to the latter case, everyone needs to get in their heads that reserve figures are based on A) what's been found, at B) the current price, and C) current technology. In reference to lithium, A) people haven't really been looking for it because it's so cheap; B) it's dirt cheap; and C) the tech to produce it cheaper hasn't really been needed so it hasn't been worked on.
Even with current tech, a figure of li-ion EVs could easily be sustained through seawater extraction indefinitely. Isn't that the beginning and end of the issue right there?
All them years of priest training, taken out by one bounty hunter.
Hello? Top Gear is for entertainment not facts. They lied for laughs.
It's important to note where the cash burn came from. Initially Tesla was looking at a car that'd only cost $60k to build; they discovered, through an audit partway through development, that it actually cost over $120k to build. They jacked up the price to $109k and have been optimizing it for a while, and finally have it down to where they make about $10k per Roadster -- not a lot for a car that expensive, but not pocket change either. At the same time, as a company, they're still losing money, as they're pumping a lot into Model S development. But they got the loan because they met the DOE's requirement to have a profitable core business (in this case, the Roadster).
All them years of priest training, taken out by one bounty hunter.
I wonder how much extra it will cost to have the blue LEDs stripped off the outside, the blue lights removed from the inside and replaced with dull red (because I like to be able to see at night), and the 17" touchscreen ripped out and replaced with knobs and dials you can operate by feel rather than sight (because looking at the road is good)?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
A relative of mine puts 100,0000 miles on a car in a year. That's a lot of fuel.
And it's still going to be a lot of fuel, burned somewhere else to make this car's electricity. We need nukes, since the wind and solar things will never put a dent in a massive shift to cars like this.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
$49,000 USD AFTER deducting the $7,500 federal tax credit.
What you really mean is: after the $7,500 more in taxes that other people, who can't afford this car, will be paying on behalf of the person who can afford it. That's nice. So progressive.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I suppose next you'll come up with some crazy talk about getting rid of tax deductions for buying gigantic houses.
... wrong.
Actually, it's the tax break for borrowing money to buy a house that we're really talking about here. And yes, it bugs the hell out of me. Local jurisdictions might want to provide some sort of financial incentive for people to buy property in their area (and some do - with the provision that the buyer occupy the house personall for some period of time), but forcing a taxpayer renting an apartment in Wyoming to help a guy in New Jersey buy a house is
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Another interesting point: My current vehicle can travel almost double that distance on a tank of gasoline, and takes seconds to refill. This is important because it's almost 500 miles to the next city from where I live -- I can travel to the next city with one tank of gas, but I'd need to refill the battery 3 times to comfortably make it by electric car, since I'm not going to let my batteries run to 0%.
Will the 8 hour drive to the next town become a multiple day journey? Will I need to start planning to visit hotels where now I can just ignore the towns? Will we see a re-emergence of small refueling towns, as we saw in the age of coal-based rail, thanks to the significantly reduced range of our vehicles?
Or, much more logically, will we see people using their electric cars for the daily everyday travel and simply use other options for long-range travel? I don't get the emphasis people are placing on these over 200 miles trips. How often do you drive that much? If the answer is 2 or 3 times a year, then the electric car should suit you just fine the vast majority of the time. If the answer is, "very often" then the electric car isn't for you, but it still is perfect for 99.5% of the driving population. It's not like gas cars are going to disappear overnight because kickass electric cars are finally here.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
That's not how people weigh choices. They will wonder "Will I ever need to travel more than 200 miles? Yes? Ok, that rules out the Tesla." That would basically be my thought process. Unless there is some huge benefit to driving a Tesla, it would simply not even be worth considering; if I bought one, I would then have to turn around and buy a second 'real' car.
It's your money, and you can use whatever thought process you want as to how to spend it, but that doesn't make it logical. If you only need to make a few over 200 mile trips a year, the money you'll save on gas will pay for the car rental. So the only thing that makes sense to ask is, "is this a better car for the majority of my driving needs and is there an alternative I can easily take for those exceptions where this car just isn't suitable?"
For me, the answer is yes on both counts. The only thing preventing me from buying the car is that I'm not in the market for a new car, much less a $50,000 one. The range isn't an issue at all.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
so if you drive a car for 5 hours at 30KW then want to recharge it in 10 minutes that means you need 900KW of power. it also means the wires in the car need to be able to handle 30 times the typical driving load.
if the connector was a 208V connector then that's about 4000 DC amps for ten minutes.
you'll be able to degauss your hard drive while you wait!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
the electric car is not for you, get over it.
there are plenty of people like me who barely ever travel more than 100km in a day and for us an electric car is perfect. No one is trying to sell one to you. Go and troll some other article.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
You and a lot of slashdot, maybe. But rule #1 about marketing is that most people don't behave rationally, particularly with something like a car. Just look at SUV's. Most people that buy (bought?) them are actually experiencing a downgrade in functionality and an increase in price, but they do it anyway. People often buy cars that perform poorly or are functionally crippled for what they need just because of some strange perception of what the car *represents*.