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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.
Anyone who would describe a US$50K car as "affordable" has more dollars than sense.
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.
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.