Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tesla Signs $60 Million Contract With Toyota

Posted by samzenpus on from the electric-money dept.

thecarchik writes "Tesla Motors announced that it has reached a $60 million deal with Toyota to develop the powertrain for an electric version of the strong-selling Rav4 sport utility vehicle. A prototype RAV4 Electric will be unveiled by Toyota at November's Los Angeles Auto Show. The company plans to sell the electric RAV4 starting in 2012, the same year that a number of new electric cars will join the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt in the US market."

9 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent news by WebManWalking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The resources of Toyota. The electric car know-how of Tesla. The factory's in the US and will create jobs here. Absolutely excellent news.

    1. Re:Excellent news by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why do people keep saying this? Do you drive 200 miles a day at highway speeds? If not, then what's the problem? Drive it during the day and charge it overnight. It's 5 miles to my work, so I have 10/day there, and another 10 if I run a bunch of errands. So a car with a 30 mile range would let me do my normal routine without any worries and would include a 10 mile backup.

    2. Re:Excellent news by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because sometimes its nice to go out for a drive on the weekends. .... So if you live in Silicon Valley

      There's no car rentals in all of Silicon Valley?

      I'll make an embarrassing public admission... I live in a house and ... gasp ... I drive a sporty little car. You should hear my older coworkers whine about my decision ... OMG what if you needed to get sheets of plywood from home depot? OMG what if a rugged dirt road mountain sprung forth from the earth in the middle of my commute and you don't have 4wd? OMG OMG!

      Well, I've found thru experience I can rent a giant truck in scarce minutes for practically nothing and I'm in the burbs. I would imagine city dwellers have it even easier. I would guess every other year I need to rent a truck for an afternoon. Its not an issue.

      99% of the time, I drive the car I WANT to drive, and the 1% of the time I NEED something else, I just rent the perfect vehicle for the job.

      The best part is my car payment and insurance bills are about half of my coworkers giant SUV payments. One months savings pays for a lifetime of truck rentals, the rest, every month, is pure gravy... which pays for those weekend getaways the SUV drivers can't afford...

      I would imagine the electric car situation is very similar. The fact that its not a road trip wanna be RV is a very rare and easily solved problem, anywhere you can rent a REAL RV.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    3. Re:Excellent news by WeatherGod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My backup plan for long distances would be to rent a gas car. We already do this in a manner of speaking for very long trips. Do you own a plane for those once or twice a year trips to visit family, or do you do like everybody else and just buy a ticket?

    4. Re:Excellent news by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you are buying an SUV in the expectation of an earthquake that will damage the road exactly enough that the sports car couldn't pass, but the SUV could? That's idiocy on so many levels it's hard to know where to start.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  2. Seriously? by Osgeld · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Toyota cant R and D this themselves after decades of research?

    sounds like a back scratching deal to me

  3. Re:Anonymous Coward by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Worker's wages account for the vast majority of people directly involved. Does it really matter whether the fat cats who keep all the profits are here or in Japan? The taxes on the profits, if any, are probably paid in the Cayman islands either way. And even if you still believe in trickle-down economics, money has no trouble trickling across borders.

  4. That's uncharitable by hackerjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course they *could* do it, but Tesla has a powertrain that's pretty much exactly what they'd need already developed for the Model S, and they're presumably already gearing up for production of the components.

    Tesla's proven they know what they're doing with the Roadster, so I can see why Toyota would want to spend $60M to adapt an almost-exactly-right design with a very low risk profile than spend probably more pulling together their existing R&D projects and tooling up, with all the entailing higher risk and extra development time.

    The hybrid powertrains they've been developing are conceptually very similar to an all-electric powertrain, but there's a lot of mechanical re-engineering they'd have to do, and that takes time. Hell, maybe $60M is a loss, but they're doing this deal because all their best engineers are busy working on another project and they just don't have the staff to handle a big rush job right now. Staffing is a big deal!

  5. Re:They already make Rav4 EVs by Locutus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    look at the wikipedia page section regarding the battery. Besides the GM EV1 going 126 miles on a charge with the NiMH batteries, the Toyota Rav4 EV also used high power NiMH batteries until they were sued by the oil company owning the patent and required to discontinue making those batteries.

    Pba batteries are too heavy for their energy density and LiOn are still very expensive.This has not helped the EV market but has helped keep oil flowing for the oil industry.

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus