Tesla Motors RELEASES 4 second 0-60 Pure Electric Powered Sports Car
 

Zero to 60 in 4 Seconds, Totally From Revving Batteries

By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: July 19, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/bu...9electric.html


TESLA MOTORS WEBSITE

WASHINGTON, July 18 — In a new approach to making the electric car a mass-market product, a California company will unveil on Wednesday a model that is very specialized, very expensive and very, very fast.

Tesla Motors, a four-year-old Silicon Valley start-up, has raised $60 million and spent about $25 million developing a two-seat Roadster that will sell for $85,000 to $100,000.

It goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, “wicked fast,” said the company’s chairman, Martin Eberhard. Because it is an electric, the driver does not have to shift into second gear until the car hits 65, he said.

The Roadster comes 10 years after the introduction of another two-seat electric car that was hailed as a breakthrough in technology, the EV-1 made by General Motors. While many environmentalists had hoped that would be the vanguard of a new trend, G.M. withdrew that car as the three-year leases expired, saying that its limited range — less than 100 miles — made it unmarketable.

The recent movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” argues that G.M. and California conspired to kill a vehicle that would have been popular. The EV-1 was leased on a basis comparable to a vehicle in the mid-$30,000 range.

In contrast to the EV-1, the Roadster is supposed to go about 250 miles on a single charge. It uses lithium-ion batteries, the kind most commonly found in laptops, and carries about three times the energy the EV-1 did, although the battery pack weighs only about 900 pounds; the original EV-1 battery pack weighed more than 1,100 pounds.

And where the EV-1 had 26 batteries wired together, the Roadster has 6,831, arranged in what Mr. Eberhard called a complex network. The voltage of the batteries is added together, as if they were wired serially, like flashlight batteries. If one fails, only the computer running the car will notice, he said, and the effect on total energy storage would be like “dropping a couple of marbles in the gas tank of your car.”

The car comes with a kit that connects to a 240-volt circuit and charges the batteries from dead to fully charged in three and a half hours. It can also be charged on a normal 110-volt household outlet, but that takes longer.

At the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is not normally a fan of fast cars, Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program, called the roadster “a remarkable potential breakthrough” because it does not use oil and can be powered by clean sources of electricity.

The last round of electric vehicles was built in anticipation of a “zero emission vehicle” quota to be imposed by California, but the state dropped the mandate.

The Roadster’s advantage is that it avoids gasoline at $3 a gallon. At the national average retail price for electricity and fuel economy of 200 watt-hours per mile, it will go 150 miles on the price of a gallon of unleaded regular.

Still, saving money presumably won’t be the prime motivation of most potential buyers, since to earn back the $65,000 premium over a two-seater like, say, the Mazda Miata, would require more than 700,000 miles of driving.

According to Mr. Eberhard, the way to get a new product into the mass market is to sell it to rich people.

“Cellphones, refrigerators, color TV’s, they didn’t start off by making a low-end product for masses,” he said. “They were relatively expensive, for people who could afford it.” The companies that sold those products at first, he said, did so “not because they were stupid and they thought the real market was at the high end of the market,” but because that was how to get production started. His company and others that have tried electric cars, he said, are too small to produce by the tens of thousands anyway.

The company will start taking orders on Wednesday and hopes to begin deliveries in the middle of next year, he said. It hopes to sell 4,000 to 5,000 over three years and then move on to a larger, more mainstream vehicle.

oh ja, let see photo's and stats.

That would be so weird to have a car pull up next to you making no sound and then just floor it off the line hearing only the tires squeal.

electric motors actually make some pretty cool sounds.

Can you imagine a flock of those things at the track? No noise. Booooring! :D:

I've seen an all electric viper that was 0-60 in about 2.5 and 1/4 in less than 10 seconds.

Gotta love this part:

he Roadster’s advantage is that it avoids gasoline at $3 a gallon. At the national average retail price for electricity and fuel economy of 200 watt-hours per mile, it will go 150 miles on the price of a gallon of unleaded regular.

Still, saving money presumably won’t be the prime motivation of most potential buyers, since to earn back the $65,000 premium over a two-seater like, say, the Mazda Miata, would require more than 700,000 miles of driving.

Salesman: "The Tesla might be 65k more than that Miata you had your eye on, but you'll break even with the Tesla after 700,000 miles."

But does a Miata go 0-60 in 4 seconds? And can a Miata electrocute you strong enough to vaporize you?

The website's unveiling will be at midnight* tonight:

www.teslamotors.com

If they can actually do a 4 second 0-60, 250 mile range car for under $100k, which looks hot...they will sell a shitload. I would also argue that this would be probably the first "real" electric car ever sold, and will therefore probably be the first collectible "classic" EV in the future. The GM EV1 was a joke, conversion EV's are a joke, and other EV's are just glorified golf carts. I wonder which company's batteries they're using? It's quite possible that the range on this thing will be even better in 3~5 years, if some of these new batteries from MIT and elsewhere pan out.




*edit: California time. Doh!

thats nuckin futz

The range and power they are getting on this new Tesla, if truth in advertising rules the day, is a great leap forward.

The future may be very bright, indeed, for pure electric cars, rather than hybrids.

how much do you believe it'll add to the cost of your monthly electric bill if say you drive 250 miles a week?

It fluctuates wildly based on where you live.

Electricity is a lot more expensive out west than in Michigan, and so forth.

But compared to gasoline, we talking major savings correct?

Major enough that you'll recoup the cost of the car in 700,000 miles. At 250 miles per week, that works out to 53 something years.

They're gonna be expensive at first. But the more popular they get, the cheaper they will be. and better too.

Like LCD's.
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Live sex webshows

You'll eventually see compact electric cars selling for $12,000, that get 300 miles plus to a charge.

If Tesla is successful, they've just accelerated that eventuality.

I love venture capitalism.

Good for greedy people, good for mother earth, good for penny pinchers. What's not to love?

Yes, or at least from what I have read. You have to compare cents-per-mile. For a purely electric car, most sources I read say that it's around 75 cents a gallon equivalent. If you can get off-peak rates, you might save more. So basically your electric bill goes up $50 a month but your gasoline bills falls by $200.

Of course, there are losses in the electric lines, and losses in charging a battery. But not as much as people probably think. You have to remember that A) the power plant turbine is much more efficient at converting fuel to power than your engine, and B) converting battery power to mechanical power is much more efficient than converting gasoline to mechanical power.

It would seem so from what they say on their site. They say that it's "135 mpg equivalent," where:

Breaking news: photos are now available 2.5 hours early lol

http://blog.wired.com/teslacar/index.album?i=0

edit: they don't say which batteries they are using, I assume they are the older lithium batteries which are somewhat delicate and pretty expensive. Try and imagine them with these batteries:

http://www.a123systems.com/html/home.html

* Much, much cheaper (the main cost of the car is batteries, I guarantee it). A123's batteries will eventually be about as cheap as lead-acid batteries. I bet they could price this thing at or below a Lotus Elise.

* 90% recharge in 5~10 minutes

* Much safer and more durable than existing lithiums

* Even better range

If all that pans out...bye-bye fuel cell cars, and gasoline engines too.

if you are correct about the future price drop of a123's then this could be one of the major breakthroughs this decade. And how can you argue with the recharge time!!! sold.

Heres a little more about the car and more early pics.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/07/...-in-4-seconds/

Time will tell if it's a Tucker or a Honda.

Batteries will take quite a bit of time to get figured out. Lithium is not without problems, but holds a lot of promise.

Kind of reminds me of when Mazda first launched the RX3.

BTW, there was a topic that recently asked what the most powerful vehicleone has ever driven. I never gave my answer. Here it is;

A 3600 HP Electric Minining Truck. Powered by two 1800 HP GE synchonous AC wheelmotors and electricity generated from a 12 ton Detroit Diesel motor. At just over 60 tons empty the acceleration is very surprising.

I wish them the best of luck, but don't count on me to trade my RX8 in on one.

The EPA' is going to have fun with all those used batteries. We'll probably just pay the Chinese so they can dump em in their rivers.

The car looks sweet.

If it performs as advertised, I do believe we are witnessing a watershed moment.