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Toyota Partners With Tesla To Make Electric Cars

Posted by timothy on from the is-a-new-tesla-greener-than-an-existing-hummer? dept.

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."

10 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. I can't wait. by Cornwallis · · Score: 5, Funny

    As one of the last eleven people in the country with a job I look forward to buying one!

    1. Re:I can't wait. by Enigma2175 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I, on the other hand, can't justify that price. I live in a colder climate and cannot spend $50k on a vehicle I only drive four months of the year (that's what my motorcycle is for). It's a safety consideration. A traditional gas-powered car, when stuck in a snow bank, will idle with the heat running and keep you alive for a very long time. An electric car will let you freeze to death before morning (and hope of rescue) comes.

      Why would the electric car let you freeze to death? If your vehicle has a 300 mile range it should have plenty of power to be able to keep you warm. For example, here is a truck that has a 35 mile range (I just chose a random car on a google search to get some numbers). It has twenty 6 volt, 210 amp hour batteries or 25,200 watt hours of capacity. If you were near a full charge when you got stuck, you could run a 1000 watt heater for 24 hours. Our hypothetical vehicle with a 300 mile range would have 210,000 wh of capacity. If you weren't running anything else you could run a 1000 watt heater for nearly nine days. The only time where you wouldn't have enough power to run a heater for a night would be if your battery pack was near empty, and you would be in the same situation if you allowed yourself to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with a nearly empty gas tank.

      Of course there is always the observation that if you are consistently getting stuck in snowbanks enough that your life is threatened, you should evaluate your equipment or your driving skills. I live in a fairly snowy place as well and I can't remember the last time I had to spend the night in my car. With tire chains and a bag of sand/salt most cars can go through some gnarly weather. Add a cell phone (or sat phone if you really are THAT remote) and the chances of you having to spend the night in your car are close to nil.

      --

      Enigma

  2. Did I miss something? by Skarecrow77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "flagging economy"
    "more affordable"
    "sell for $49,900"

    one of these things is not like the others... ?

    1. Re:Did I miss something? by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oooh, ooh, you also forgot "green cars". Attention, ecomentals: what do you think is generating the electricity to power the (energy intensive) construction and use of your "green" car? Fairy farts?

      Electric cars will drive demand for electricity that may (and should, but who knows?) be generated from renewables or even (hold your nose) "clean" coal, but right now? You're just moving the emissions from your exhaust to the dirty old coal plant up the road, plus the even worse one in China where they dug up the Unobtanium to make your car.

      Two problems with your complaint here.

      One, you have to start the ball rolling somewhere. If we want to move to 100% electric cars powered by 100% clean/renewable/green electricity, then we need to start rolling out the electric cars sometime.

      Two, centrally generated electricity is generally going to be cleaner than all these scattered combustion engines we've got now. Even if you're burning smelly ol' coal, you've got a single source of pollution to monitor/control.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:Did I miss something? by m.ducharme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The other responders have pretty much deconstructed your post, but they left out a few other interesting benefits of getting off the oil nipple and exploring other energy sources. There's a geopolitical and strategic advantage to weaning ourselves off oil, in that if we can do so, we (the West) would no longer need a strong military and diplomatic presence in the middle East. That presence, more than any other expense, is bankrupting the US, and involves making deals with some of the most unsavoury governments in the world. Moving away from an oil economy would allow the US to tell the Arabs, Persians and Israelis to go away, and take their blood vendettas with them. That more than anything would bring about an American victory in the "war on terrorism," as all the terrorists really want is for the US and other Western powers to stop meddling in their affairs.

      Also, some of us greenies are willing to take a second look at nuclear power tech, especially if re-use of the fissionables was on the table. Either as a transition to a fully renewable power supply, or as an on-demand supplement to wind and solar energy over the long term.

      But hey, flame away, and keep paying the price for your oil dependency. Other countries in the world are starting to figure out just how high that price is, and they'll be more than happy to replace the US as the global hegemonic power.

      --
      Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
  3. There will be no stopping this by brokeninside · · Score: 5, Funny

    It'll keep going forward even if they try to put the brakes on.

  4. Nissan LEAF has Toyota running scared... by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (...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.'"
  5. This again? by asukasoryu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Re:a journey of a thousand miles per gallon.... by jcupitt65 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's the other way around, actually. 80 - 90% of a vehicle's lifetime energy use is in driving it around. You can google many versions of this calculation, but here's one from Slate.

    You might be remembering the report from a few years ago that claimed a Hummer was more efficient than a Prius, but that's been pretty thoroughly debunked many times now.

  7. Is there a FUD mod? by guidryp · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.