Tesla Model S: 0-60 In 4.5 Seconds

thecarchik writes "We already know a lot about the all-electric 2012 Tesla Model S sedan — but at a press event ahead of tonight's exclusive VIP event at the former Toyota NUMMI facility in Fremont, California, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Tesla was making a faster Model S for those with a sporty side. Cutting the brisk 0-60 time of the standard Model S from 5.6 second to under 4.5 seconds, the sportier version features the same 85 kilowatt-hour, 300 miles-per-charge battery pack found in the 2012 Model S Signature series. 'That's quicker than a [Porsche] 911 [Carrera],' joked Musk. 'Not bad for an electric luxury sedan.' But if you thought 300 miles was the maximum range a Tesla Model S could do, you'd be wrong."

Comments

320 miles

[vlm]

Summary cut off right where it got interesting, announcing 320 mile range. The Tesla is of course useless because a 320 mile range means I can only drive for 10 continuous hours without a brake in 32 MPH stop and go traffic and I love having a five hour commute each direction. In fact, everyone knows that not only does the average american watch TV 8 hours per day, they also commute 10 hours per day.

Re:320 miles

[colinrichardday]

I can only drive for 10 continuous hours without a brake in 32 MPH stop and go traffic

So how do you deal with stop-and-go traffic without a brake?

Re:320 miles

[gmuslera]

If you handle them a bit of plutonium maybe they could install on it batteries that hold 1.2gigawatts, and you'll never get late to work, in fact, you can get there too early.

Re:320 miles

[Rei]

Actually, in 32 MPH stop-and-go traffic, you'd probably get more like 400+ miles range. Li-ion EVs excel in those conditions. The optimum steady-state speed for the Tesla Roadster is 15-20 mph. Stop and start causes loss of efficiency, but not nearly as much as highway-speed travel. The Roadster's nominal range would be met at approximately a steady-state of 55mph, if I remember the numbers correctly. Since most people drive faster than that on the highway, most people reported lower achievable ranges.

Good to see they're offering an aero wheel mod. Go Tesla! :)

Re:320 miles

[ianare]

Expensive and useless toy for rich people like ... the first cars, the first motor boats and the first airplanes. Give it a few years. We'll all be driving electric cars soon enough.

How about a Model T?

[tp1024]

The Ford T cost $240 in 1925. That's $3000 in today's money. If you want a revolution, what you want is low prices.

Re:How about a Model T?

[haruchai]

You clearly don't understand this is a luxury sedan and not an everyman car.
  How many years or decades was it from the introduction of the auto to the availability of the Model T? The price you quote for the Model T in 1925 is relatively accurate but the car had been in production for SEVENTEEN years by that time and its price of $850 in 1909 would be equivalent to about $22000 today
  Do you seriously think the availability of a low-cost EV will take the same length of time?

Re:How about a Model T?

[haruchai]

Thanks for the link but you'll get a better comparison if you use the Model T's price of $850 in 1909, instead of the cost after being in production for 17 years.

Re:How about a Model T?

[Nethead]

I already drive a '93 Saturn SL1, how much lower can I go?

Re:How about a Model T?

[Osgeld]

I was looking at a 10,000$ Kia, sure that didnt have AC, power anything or even an AM radio, that car had the highest safety rating of that year, 40MPG. I ended up getting a 15 grand model and that even had a MP3 player.

Meanwhile at the GM dealership I could get a lower quality car, with less features, less gas mileage, less power and a much lower safety rating for damn near 10 grand more than the IMPORT. So its not impossible to make a low cost car, sure not 3 grand like the OP suggests but the American companies are not even trying.

Its been over a decade since I bought a domestic car, and now that almost all the imports are being made in the USA, I get to have a quality product for a reasonable price without hearing the "dey took our jobs" horse shit.

Re:How about a Model T?

[AK Marc]

The regulations are expensive to comply with, but most serve a good purpose. What should have been done (blocked by the Big-3) would be to merge US regulations with EU and Japanese regulations so that a single regulation would apply everywhere. Instead, the US has deliberately invented incompatible regulations as protectionist matters to block good-selling EU cars from landing on US shores. Yay protectionism for failing industries at the expense of the citizens.

Re:How about a Model T?

[tp1024]

The availability of a low-cost EV has already taken more than its reasonable share of time. Actually, they should have been around for at least a decade.

The Chinese have them. In fact, Daimler sued a Chinese car maker in 2006 for making a copy-cat Smart car with an electric engine and battery. And the Chinese had already been using electric cars for real since the mid 90ies. - Not that anybody cared or noticed back in the stagnated (that is, not developing) countries.

The key is to understand, that electric cars have no market as luxury items unless and until they have been established as cars for everyday users. Before that, there just won't be the infrastructure it takes to make proper use of them. But in order to get to this point, they need a price point that makes it possible for people to use them as single-purpose vehicles, alongside the traditional ones. (E.g. getting one person and a suitcase to work and back)

$3000-4000 for a light-weight two-person car with limited range (80km/50miles) and speed (below 80km/h or 50mph) is entirely possible to achieve. Weight, range, acceleration and speed are the main determinants of the size of the battery (and its weight!), which determines the price of the battery and thus the price of an electric car. Such a car could actually have reasonable charging times (One tenth the total capacity means one tenth the time to charge) and such a car could do some 90% of the driving for a lot of people. But because of the limited performance nobody is going to bother buying such a car unless it's really cheap. (Meaning: unless it has a price that makes it reasonable to buy without being an eco-freak.)

But then again, you don't get to pay gas prices of $8/gal (as in Europe) until you realize that the USA will collapse if it continues to pretend that cheap oil is only a matter of military power.

Re:How about a Model T?

[haruchai]

Until now, most of the car companies have been blocking the path of a mass-market EV that could compete. Chevron managed to scoop the NiMH patents and their subsidiary Cobasys won't accept any orders for car-sized batteries below 10k units. If you're going to travel above 25 mph, you can't be considered a low-speed vehicle anymore and you suddenly have to meet a lot of additional requirements for safety.

And, yes, US attitudes against small, odd vehicles that can't do the 1/4 mile in 15 secs and cheap gas is a big factor.

Re:Wait for Top Gear

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember all the claims Tesla motors made about the original sports car. Top Gear UK tested it and most of the performance claims turned out ot be less than 1/2. It was utter junk. I would like to see Top Gear (who I trust) test this new Tesla (who I no longer trust).

I love Top Gear, but you have to be pretty dumb to believe a review of an electric car done by someone who has on numerous occasions said he doesn't like them.

Re:The imporant question

[abhi_beckert]

The Tesla Roadster has an expected battery life of 7 years, and you can pre-order a new one for $12,000 (it'll be delivered in 7 years).

No doubt the prices for new batteries will have gone down by 7 years from now, and the Model S has a swappable battery (for those who don't want to wait for it to charge).

Yes, this is an expensive car. But it's half the price of their previous car, and their next one is supposedly going to be cheaper again.

Re:Wait for Top Gear

[__aarzwb9394]

Top Gear has a record of out and out faking when "reviewing" Tesla cars. As an entertainment show, I am not sure how much credence I would give them for any brand, when it comes to Tesla they are on record as lying.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2008-12-29/green_sheet/30080624_1_electric-car-drag-race-lotus-elise

Robert Llewellyn has pointed out that Top Gear's roadshows are sponsored by Shell (who are invested in hydrogen as the alternative fuel of the future) and that Top Gear has talked up the potential of hydrogen as superior to electric vehicles.

Robert Llewellyn is of course a very vocal electric car advocate. I recommend his web series Carpool: just as entertaining as Top Gear, but in a different way.

Re:Wait for Top Gear

[Rei]

It doesn't take nearly as long as Top Gear pretended it does, and they knew that. On the standard Tesla charger, a *full* charge (not a daily commute charge, but a "I just drove 200 miles" charge) takes 3 1/2 hours.

Top Gear also pretended the vehicle overheated (it didn't), that they were without a working vehicle at one point (they weren't), that the vehicle ran out of charge (it didn't), and that it would run of charge abnormally earlier than comparable gasoline vehicles (it wouldn't; all-out with a Roadster on the track may only get you ~40 miles, but all-out with a Veyron will only get you ~60).

Top Gear is an entertainment show that doesn't care much for the truth.

As for your "transferring carbon production", the DOE has already extensively studied this (as have many, many other groups). In every case, the conclusion is that even on our current grid, EVs are notably cleaner than gasoline cars. Meanwhile, oil keeps getting dirtier (tar sands, deepwater, etc), while the grid gets cleaner (new power infrastructure in the US is primarily NG and wind).

Re:The imporant question

[Rei]

Well, the Volt's pack is going to be *warrantied* for ten years, soo.... Plus, A) EV battery packs can often have parts of them replaced individually, and B) evne a reduced-capacity pack still has value (say, on grid load balancing)

Battery life is always going to be limited by *design*. You can have any sort of lifespan you want out of a battery, from nanoseconds to tens of thousands of years. It's all about tradeoffs. The better the chemistry, the better the temperature regulation. the gentler the charge/discharge curve, the better the charge management, and the lower the depth of discharge range, the longer the lifespan, by orders of magnitude. As for Tesla's design approach:

  * Chemistry: nothing special -- same as in laptops
  * Temperature regulation: top notch -- a far cry from an unregulated battery pack sitting right next to your CPU.
  * Charge management: very good -- detailed computer monitoring and balancing of hundreds of individual subcomponents.
  * Charge curve: The most common case (~3.5 hours per full charge) is a little gentler than an average laptop charge. The mild case (a 120V socket) is exceedingly gentle. The rare case (fast charging on a long trip, ~1 hour) is worse than for most laptops.
  * Discharge curve: Unless the vehicle is being put through track duty, gentler than a laptop.
  * Depth of discharge: It's hard to generalize between laptops. Telsa does not charge to 100%, nor allow down to 0%, and the most common discharge case usually only uses a few tens of percents charge before recharging. So in general, well gentler than for a laptop.

Different vehicles vary. The Leaf uses a better chemistry, but poorer temperature regulation. The Volt uses both a better chemistry and good temperature regulation.

Re:Wait for Top Gear

[swalve]

There are lots of cars that won't meet the needs of 100% of the population. This is one of them. It is also an expensive, niche vehicle that is not (I don't think) intended to be a drop-in replacement for your Oldsmobile.

Automation

[oberhaus]

Another big part of the Tesla story is automation. Check out today's post by Robert Scoble:

This is the future of American manufacturing. They can make anything. It's almost 100% vertically integrated, which means everything from plastics and metals to batteries, electronics, motors and component assembly is done here, with flexible multi-purpose robots. Every car can be different, with no retooling, because the robots can do anything. It's just software.