Slashdot Mirror
Toyota Partners With Tesla To Make Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "Toyota just announced that it will invest $50 million in Tesla Motors and the two companies will partner to manufacture electric vehicles to meet California's growing demand for greener cars. Bay Area residents should be especially excited, as this venture is expected to create thousands of new jobs in the San Francisco Bay area, and is sure to be a boon to California's flagging economy. Tesla fans as well should rejoice as the new partnership will allow the EV startup to bring its highly coveted, iconic design to more affordable electric vehicles like the Model S sedan, which will sell for $49,900 and gets 300 miles on a 3- to 5-hour charge."
As one of the last eleven people in the country with a job I look forward to buying one!
"flagging economy"
"more affordable"
"sell for $49,900"
one of these things is not like the others... ?
Answering the "is-a-new-tesla-greener-than-an-existing-hummer?" in the header:
Yes, collectively in the long term. Every new electric car put on the road will contribute via networking effects to the development of an infrastructure to support electrics, and every gas-burning car taken off the road will contribute to the dismantling of the infrastructure that drills (and spills) for oil underwater, ships (and slicks) it in tankers around the world, etc. A new car is only manufactured once; it will continue to interact as a part of our environment for years (possibly decades) to come.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It'll keep going forward even if they try to put the brakes on.
Tesla, to me, seems to be the same old inefficient car bodies with a bunch of batteries squeezed into it. Batteries where the elements come from strip mining and other nasty things, so the environmental impact is just shifted and reduced a bit, but not a lot.
OTOH, Aptera, to me, represents a new way of thinking.
(...and running, and running, and running, without stopping...)
Nissan LEAF has been announced at a price point that makes it cost-competitive with the Prius, which nobody expected. Toyota is now terrified because they bet the farm on hybrids, which have shitty mileage! Yes, I said it, their mileage is shit. You get the same effective mileage or better with a small TDI. In the really real world, 1.8 TDI Golfs get better mileage than any Prius. And that doesn't even get into the Lupo with 1.6 BlueTec diesel... which we can't have here because it won't pass federal crash test requirements.
Parallel hybrids are a really dumb idea and nobody has brought us a plug-in series hybrid yet. Enter: Nissan LEAF, to actually change the game. Nobody will take people like Aptera seriously without EVs gaining more market traction. Thanks, Ghosn.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I like it! First, I've been around Tesla; involved as a third-party with drivetrain development. They are a GREAT group of engineer's with entreuprenurial spirit... Everyone I worked with took ownership with the goal of designing/engineering top quality. Those of you who are not in the automotive world don't have any concept of what goes into building a passenger vehicle nor the cost associated with development of new technologies for this market. Yes with a decent bank-roll I'm guessing that 80% of the /. readers could come up with a functional electric vehicle (batteries, VFD, a couple of seats, 4 tires and a steering wheel), but it is much more than this when you consider safety (MVSS), reliability / durability, comfort (A/C, radio with bluetooth and mp3).... building vehicles and being competitive in that market is challenging. Breaking into that market with a totally new brand, product line, and technology is the most daunting concept I've ever contemplated. $50M is chump change in terms of vehicle development. Consider that Toyota paid $16.4M as a fine for the recall debacle... 33% of what they are investing with Tesla... What I see as important in this is the alignment of the planets; Toyota's manufacturing facility in San Jose (Matrix / Pontiac Vibe) is currently idled; pushing the Tesla sub-$50k will require sales volume... manufacturing volume can not be accomplished without a proper manufacturing facility...
How many times do we have to hear this argument? Central production of electricity at a power plant is more efficient than millions of cars producing it in internal combustion engines. Shifting the pollution away from where cars drive should be a benefit (i.e. breathing less smog in LA). Then there's the effect of burning fuel to transport fuel to all the gas stations when we already have an electrical infrastructure to deliver energy to electric cars. I agree that not all power plants are green, but compared to burning fuel in our cars, it's greener. And once demand for electricity goes up, maybe we'll finally get the push we need to expand renewable energy generation. There's no instant solution but there is progress.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
That's 'cause you haven't thought about storage issues yet.
"everyday use" usually means commuting. So your car was charged overnight, and you drive to work. If your work is less than 150 miles away, you just plug it in when you get home (real world mileage is probably not so precise, but I really doubt there are many ~300 mile/day commuters out there). Long road trip? That's not everyday use, and presumably something like a "car share" program would cover you for the few times you're going on a long drive.
The important part is that now the foucs is on fuel efficienty and not on maximum power.
And i am still suprised there are no diesel hybrids yet from anyone. Maybe the extra diesel noise would give a strange driving expierence?
There is one small detail:
One can buy a running toyta prius 5 years ago, but a nissan leaf is not yet for sale. You cannot compare a previous generation car with a future generations car. Well actually you can because parent poster did just that.
I think they are less inconvenient than it sounds. Most people commute a fairly limited distance, a 300 mile range will handle almost all of the average person's everyday driving. The inconvenience is for people who drive a lot (for business probably) and recreational/vacation driving. I couldn't take a car like this on the 800 mile trip we take every summer to visit family.
That said, people who live in big cities have realized this for years. You own transportation that supports your regular commute habits. In many cases, people who live in NYC don't own cars. They can rent a car for extreme cases. Likewise, our family makes ~2-3 trips a year that would push this car over it's limit. It would be worth it for us to own a car like this for commutes, charging it over-night, and rent a car for those trips.
That said, the cost is still way to high to make it economically feasible for us.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
you're joking right?
H2 is made by steam cracking CH4 (natural gas), thus is a carbon fuel.
Also, do me a favor:
Set your odometer trip meter to 0. Drive your normal drive for a day, what does it read? 10mi? 25? 50? most people have commutes that are under 50 miles, which means this car wouldn't have to "fill up" but once a week overnight. If you are not "most people" then don't buy this car. Bonus points, many employers will let you charge the car for free at work.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Anyone who would describe a US$50K car as "affordable" has more dollars than sense.
Even if generation 1 electric cars are a mess, SOMEONE has to make them viable enough and sexy enough to get the market moving in that direction. As soon as electric cars start becoming a significant chunk of the automobile market we'll see battery, motor, and material research go through the roof. This has already started, and I think it would be hard to argue that Tesla hasn't played a big role in swaying the general perception of electric cars from "slow ugly thing that hippies drive" to Serious Business.
Aptera is awesome in their own right, and you're right that their design pushes the envelope a lot further. Hopefully gen-2 mass market EVs will go more in that direction. I just don't think anyone should downplay the importance of Tesla (etc.) making the generation of cars that bridges the gap between what we drive now and what we'll drive once electric cars are pervasive.
The challenge is bringing the ability to self-charge vehicles to more people.
Apartment people are not going to be able to charge their own electric car anytime soon, so they are out of the self-charge market (they’ll have to go to a station). At least until there is some portable battery pack...
Few people in America have Garages to charge their electric cars.
More have Street parking in front of their townhouse or single family house.
Target market=In front of your home street parkers.
There are two hurdles in this market
1. Biggest=Legislation. Allowing homeowners to install a plug near the curb (like a parking meter, but less obvious: could even be delivered via the route in the existing gutter drain from the house).
2. Technical Challenge=Developing a fully waterproof (top to bottom) electrical cord, that requires a key or combo to unlock it, and installed on a retractable coil. This is where potential $millions await.
Of course we cannot forget the unmentioned challenge = fighting for that exact public space to do the charge.
Because that post deserves it. What a load of BS.
First off Top Gear isn't a source of factual information, they are an entertainment program. They have a massive anti-EV, anti-Hybrid bias. Do you remember Tesla story where they had to push the Tesla off because it ran out of power? Well it didn't actually run out of power, they just did that for dramatic effect. I love watching Top Gear as entertainment, but they are not credible source of anything.
So who knows what the actual facts of the M3 run where, but still you are just making the information up, because even top gear didn't make those claims.
They raced a Prius around a track at it's absolute limit, pedal to the metal 100% of the time, and followed it in a M3 which could match the Prius easily at part throttle and under those circumstances and claimed the M3 got better gas mileage. That is possible but given it is Top gear, in no way guaranteed.
But even Top gear didn't claim that an M3 got better highway MPG.
The rest of the post is just a reiteration of the debunked Hummer is better than a Prius FUD.
Pure FUD, no facts. If there isn't a mod for that, there should be.
I was trying to figure out what Toyota gets out of this. They have everything they need to build their own EVs. The Prius has electrical components for everything, it is nearly an EV already and they have had the Rav4 EV, and the FCHV test bed platforms. There is nothing in technology that they really need Tesla for.
But I think I know what they get out of this: ZEV credits in California. 50 Million is pocket change compared to the cost of bringing their own new EV to market. This lets them cover their ZEV requirements in California on the cheap if they don't really believe a full EV is practical (money making) for them at this time.
The actual California State pages on ZEV program seem to be down for me right now, but this is what I am talking about:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/28/business/fi-zev28
"Under the new standards, passed unanimously, the board will require the largest companies selling cars in the state to produce 7,500 electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles for sale, lease or loan in California from 2012 to 2014 -- down from the 25,000 required in the period under the previous rules.
In addition, carmakers will be called upon to make about 58,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the same period. The previous regulation, passed in 2003, made no provisions for plug-in hybrids because they were not considered viable at the time."
There's one other good reason to use an electric car. Pure performance. Electric motors have more torque than any ICE of comparable weight. For people who drive cars for fun, not just utility, electric cars are the way to go.
That's already taken care of. The rolling blackouts in California were frauds, perpetrated by Enron, which was gaming the California electricity tariff system for money. A fair number of those responsible are in prison now.
Combining Toyota's "Can't Stop!" technology, to solve Tesla's limited range problems is pure genius!
It is easy to store hydrogen. You just have to combine it with carbon so that you get a room temperature liquid, which can be distributed and utilized by existing infrastructure...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!