It Must Be Mine #1,154
A new company called Tesla Motor is apparently producing an all-electric, zero-to-sixty-in-four-seconds car. Check out the car, check out the blog.
I'll be really sad if it turns out that this is a scam, joke, or publicity stunt.
Comments
If it is a hoax, they've convinced at least one Bay Area reporter. Sounds great. (Sounds expensive, too. But five or ten years from now, there'll be a Tesla for the rest of us, right? Assuming the world still exists?)
Love the article. Great find. Nice to read someone calling it more or less like it is.
This particular car may be a hoax; I'll ask around my electric-car-dork message boards to find out.
Whether or not this car is a hoax, a car could be built with existing technology that lives up to its specs.
DORK ON!
If you used a large bank of high-voltage Lithium polymer batteries (200-300v) coupled to an ultracapacitor array, you could easily get 220-300 miles worth of power into a reasonably-sized battery package. Couple that to modern AC induction motors in the wheels hubs and you could easily generate ridiculous acceleration; and with integrated dynamic gear reduction (like in a Saturn Ion's transmission), a high top speed.
DORK OFF!
Many of you LAers might remember GMs EV-1 that was leased there a few years ago. It did 2/3 of what this car claims to do. Battery, motor, and controller technology has come a ways since then.
Even my relatively primitive home-built electric cars do more than I need for commuting range and accelerating in traffic.
Hell, the freakin' 1964 VW Bug I'm working on now will accelerate better than the original, and I'm using surplus NiCad aviation batteries and a series wound DC motor!
Oops. DORK OFF!
Anyways, don't get me started. There's no reason most two-car families couldn't own an electric, especially in sunny LA.
OK, enough preaching. I'll check it out.
Further reasearch seems to confirm the car is real, but is a Ferrarri in terms of price. Interestingly, they use a single motor coupled to the wheels with a standard transmission and still get that kind of performance.
If one of the big car companies puts an electric car into mass distribution, they will make money. One day one of them will figure that out.
Further reasearch seems to confirm the car is real, but is a Ferrarri in terms of price.
This seems like a smart play: Make it irresistably cool and target the people who can afford to pay a luxury premium for a technology that's still relatively low-demand. (Compared to other cars, anyway.)