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Tesla Delivers First Batch of Model S Electric Sedans
After years of tantalizing pictures and promises, on Friday the first 10 Model S sedans left Tesla's Fremont, California factory. This first handful of the new S has long been spoken for, and the cars have been delivered (or are on the way) to buyers around the U.S. Even with tax-supported subsidies, the new sedan isn't cheap: the subsidized base price is just under $50,000. Still, 10,000 people have put down five grand apiece for the chance to own one. Wired has a brief piece on what the S is like to drive. What's a 160-miles-per-charge, $50k car worth to you?
Just to save some time and energy for posts to come. Yes it's over 20K so you aren't interested.
Why can't they make one for under 20K? Batteries are too expensive.
160 miles isn't enough? It wasn't made with you in mind.
Gasoline suits me fine! Then be prepared for $5 and eventually $10 a gallon. Oil is running out and it will happen eventually. If you get solar panels to recharge from the cost of sunlight never goes up and the trend is for solar panels to get cheaper.
$50,000 is chump change given the market they're targeting; it's well in line with the purchase costs of similarly-outfitted gassers and it costs a hell of a lot less than the German models. If their build quality is somewhere in between typical American shit (Even the Ford GT famously has flimsy interior, and it's the most expensive American production car ever AFAICT) and a decent kraut kan then the price is eminently reasonable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The cars with the larger battery options can go 300(reviews say 265) miles on a charge, and can be charged at up to 62 miles per hour of charge. That's pretty decent
There is a battery upgrade option. Wired is talking about the larger battery
Same price as a BWM, Mercedes, Nice SUV, etc. The only difference is that the Tesla costs a fraction of the price to own and can outperform most of those cars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Note this is for the base model. The top end gets closer to a conventional combustion vehicle for not much more than a higher end sedan, and the car performs like a high end sorts sedan. This price is actually one of the better ones out there considering its capabilities, and it's capable of traveleling farther than most electrics on the market at the high end (300 miles per charge).
0 to 60 times in 5.7 seconds.
Not bad at all...
Even with tax supported subsidies, gas isn't cheap.
Gas shill Luddites would have us using a hundred year old technology instead of solving the technological problems that new technology always presents, all the while denying that there can be any negative consequences from any technology filling the coffers of right wing bloviating ignoramuses.
What's it worth to you to keep gas filled blow-hards redistributing money into the hands of cronies preparing the ground with lies and deceit for the next phony yellow cake war of liberation.
Donate your money to Al-Quaeda why don't you; Exxon Mobil, Shell, etc do with their royalty - and I do mean royalty - payments to Wahabi Arabia.
Or not.
If you can't afford the current tesla, wait a little longer; toyota will be using tesla battery technology to introduce an electric suv based on the toyota Rav model.
http://pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+tesla+build+rav4+ev+woodstock+ontario.htm
tesla has comitted to introducing a 30k+ model X suv by 2015.
http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx
This comment has not been approved by the Ameican Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, their employees or contractors.
I make it as about four cents, assuming you pay the national average for power. But, a Prius is not the proper comparison. A BMW 5 series is about right. Really, the question is whether the quiet ride and performance is worth the lack of range - fuel costs don't matter to these people.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
The idea is to make the consumer portion "green" and non-emissive, because then over time the underlying power generation can be made less polluting or swapped out for entirely new methods of generating power without requiring any "upgrades" or action by the consumer. It is definitely easier to regulate, and probably less expensive and more efficient to implement, emissions control at a handful of large power stations than millions of individual car engines.
Better known as 318230.
large flickr thread just about that:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/7408464122
by the guy who got VIN # 1
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I suppose a $50,000 ANYTHING would be worth about $50,000 to me.
Actually its more complicated than that. The car may be worth significantly more or less than the amount paid to an individual person. The car itself may only be worth $40,000 to a person but something else, say greening their image, may be worth $10,000+. One the other hand the car may be worth significantly more than $50,000 to an extremely environmentally conscious person, so this person essentially thinks its a deal. Yet another person may also think it is worth significantly more because they added up the price of the components and found a higher number, appreciate the taxpayer subsidy, and want to purchase now before that subsidy goes away - say due to a change of political administration.
In short, prices do not always match a person's willingness to pay, a more technical phrase for what its worth to person. A price generally needs to be at or below that willingness to pay. Apple sold a bunch of iPhones at $600 when it was introduced. Those people who thought an iPhone was worth $600 paid less than that when newer more capable models were introduced at $500 and then $400.
Give it a year and I'm sure that will change drastically.
Again, that depends. Back to that government subsidy. If the subsidy is removed and the price for a new car goes up then the used car may retain its value to some degree.
Why not use solar energy to produce the solar panels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Solar_Breeder_Project
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Then you should read the reviews, esp. the second link on the original posting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I was recently in the market for a new car and I had the chance to research several of the electric and plugin hybrids on the market and test drive them. I'll brain dump some of my research here in case someone else finds it useful.
Tesla Model S - The car looks really awesome, and I loved the styling of it. It is quite expensive with the base model starting at just under $50k after a $7,500 federal tax credit. The big reason I didn't but this was that the base model isn't even out yet. They are manufacturing the signature series first which is the fancier model with the giant 85 kwH battery pack. Also, I live in Arizona which doesn't yet have a Tesla showroom to see/drive the car or a service center to service it. You would have to pay a mechanic per mile to come out and service it. Scottsdale, AZ is getting a showroom and a service station later this year though.
Nissan Leaf - I test drove the leaf, and as with most electric cars this thing was pretty zippy. If you haven't had a chance to test drive an electric car yet I highly recommend trying it. Having 100% of your torque at 0 RPM is very nice. The main disadvantage to the Leaf is the only 100 mile range. I drive between Tucson and Phoenix often enough that this is impractical for me. I would imagine that for many people in large cities or on the east coast where things are closer together this would be more practical.
Chevy Volt - I really like the design of the engine of the Chevy Volt. An electric drive train with a range extending ICE is a good design that I think other plugin hybrids should pick up and run with. You could design the ICE to be optimized to run at a constant RPM and be way more efficient. The electric range on the Volt was between 25-50 miles with an average of 35 miles. This was actually an excellent range for my daily commute of 26 miles. I could in theory have driven the Volt almost entirely on electricity and only used gasoline very rarely. It has a few mechanisms to support using almost no gasoline. First if the gas engine hasn't come on at all in 6 weeks then it will briefly engage the gas engine to make sure everything stays lubricated and in good condition. Also the gas becoming stale in the tank can be an issue. In general you would want to go through a tank of gas at least once a year. Ultimately I didn't like the cargo space on the Volt and the fact that it only seats 4 people as the center rear position is taken up by the battery running down the center of the car.
Great comparison of the Volt vs. the Plugin Prius:
http://gm-volt.com/2012/04/13/cost-per-mile-comparison-2012-volt-vs-2013-prius-plug-in/
Plugin Prius - This was the car I was leaning towards getting for a while. It's probably the most practical of the other cars that I looked into. I was already a fan of the amazing gas mileage the regular Prius gets and it is a tried and tested technology. Even if you never plugged in the vehicle then you could drive it like a regular Prius and get great gas mileage. The cargo space on the Prius is pretty amazing (you can fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood in there). One drawback is that to fit the new batteries in the plugin model they got rid of the spare tire. They give you basically a fancy fix-a-flat and then tell you not to use it because it will damage the tire pressure monitoring system which costs $600 to fix. However the biggest drawback is the price. While it's only about $3,000 more than a comparably equipped regular Prius, you have to get a bunch of options that I didn't care about. The base model plugin Prius starts at $32k with a $2,500 Federal tax credit putting the final cost at $29,500. The base model (Package 2) Prius costs only $24,000. You do get some features like the navigation system, voice activated dialing, and Entune but all of that are worthless options if you have a smart phone. If I could have bought the plugin prius with the package 2 options for only $3k more then I would have done that, but as it stands it would've been $5,500 more for the plugi
I've owned a German luxury sedan and wasn't so impressed - the build quality is fine, but there's a lot of hype too. Ultimately, most cars sold in America are built in America, and you can't judge a car by where the stockholders live. I seriously considered the S before I bought my current (Japanese) car, and the only reason I didn't get the Tesla was fears about reliability: at this price range, I can't afford a back-up car.
The Tesla looks great - it and the much more expensive Jaguars are the best looking sedans out there IMO. The performance is great, and it has the tech toys to match Inifinit and BMW (which Jaguar doesn't have yet). If the 160 mile range is real, that reaches the sweet spot where I can make my long commute and still run errands if I need to.
If I were the early-adopter sort, I'd have ordered an S, and if Tesla makes it I'll likely be choosing them next time around.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The Tesla Roadster has a "traditional" automobile transmission, and indeed it even had a variable speed gearbox (two speed plus reverse). The torque ranges of an electric motor played hell on the transmission and nearly killed Tesla Motors as a company because the company who was developing the transmission failed to deliver a product lasting more than a couple thousand miles. That it was an unusual engineering domain because it involved an AC variable frequency induction motor instead of an internal combustion engine is where the problem came up. In retrospect Tesla should have concentrated on that transmission as a critical development path item and perhaps even moved its development in-house (which eventually did happen anyway). The failure of this transmission is what cost Martin Eberhard his job as CEO, and pushed Elon Musk into a much more active role in the company.
One of the reasons for having multiple speeds is that at extremely high RPM rates you start to get some additional performance issues, where the motor starts to act as a powerful gyroscope, making it difficult to turn the vehicle and impacting the handling of the vehicle as well as pushing limits on the equipment when you get to very high speeds that can result in a mechanical breakdown. There are legitimate reasons to be looking for a multi-speed transmission even for electric vehicle, even though you don't need to have nearly so many gear ratios. As for how many electric vehicle manufacturers are building multi-speed transmissions is another story entirely.
I drive cross-country about once every 5 years. Renting a car when I do that can make sense even if I don't own an electric car.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Obviously there is the environmental question too but to be able to answer that you would have to now the environmental impact of manufacturing the battery pack as well as the electricity to charge it. My guess would be that the Tesla would come out on top overall but probably not by a lot (but that is a pure guess).
My wife wants to order either the X or S. We crunched the numbers just for the S @ $50, using the day rate of Xcel (.11/kwh). What it comes out to, is that compared to any other care that costs $35K on up, the S kills it. It is when you compare the S to cars under $30K. Of course, that is like comparing a Mercedes to a Cruiz or an apple to a boat. IOW, these are all different groups. There really is NO comparison. So, you want to compare the S against $40-65K cars. And the tesla comes WAY out on top. Simple as that.
Now, the costs of the battery is a none issue. Tesla's are warrentied for 8 years. So, the question becomes, what did batteries look like 8 years ago, and what will they look like 8 years out? Well, 12 years ago the EV-1 had just died, which used Lead Acid and then NiMH. The Gas powered Hybrids came about 6 years ago, and they STILL use NiMH batteries.
IBM is saying that they are working on Li-air batteries and expect to have them in production by 2020, which is 8 years out. These are expected to have about 5-10K charges, and in terms of charge density, will hold 5-15x what today's batteries hold. Heck, even now, there is a new Li battery out that has double the energy denisty, takes fast charges without a hitch and has some 2K+ charges for the same price.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
At greater than $0.45/kwh, the price to buy it isn't your biggest worry.
Please don't spew false information. PG&E nighttime rates for EV charging are about $0.05/kWh, which is about like buying gasoline for $0.50/gal.
Even at the made-up price you pulled out of your bunghole, it's still comparable to the per-mile fuel cost of a gasoline car, never mind the practically-zero maintenance cost of the electric.