As long as one of the battery packs doesn’t explode and kill somebody, this guy doesn’t seem to be doing any harm. Lightening a few wallets, but the buyers of his stuff can afford it. One thing can be said for him which is that he gets a hell of lot of publicity for what he has. Keeping interest going in battery-powered cars can be a good thing, and buyers of a real product, from Toyota for example, will be ready when such arrives. I’m starting to appreciate him.

But what all of this “harmlessness” does is erode the trust in business ventures, and makes legitimate future business ventures more difficult to get off the ground.

Which is a bad thing for economies, national and personal.

That’s actually a not-unreasonable thing to say. A lot can happen in 30 years in terms of new production. There are other “experts” running around saying half of all existing cars will be electric in just 7 or 10 years. Those are the idiots.

We can fight as much as we want against reduced speed limits and limited action-radius for our cars, it’s coming.
In the future, we’ll treat easily available energy as the precious gift it is, and we’ll consider pissing it away taboo.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/tesla-dead-ahead-the-automobiles-energy-lean-and-speed-restricted-future/

Told my wife this and she instantly “got it”. “OK so in the future, the average person won’t be able to afford a car.”

She’s pretty darned smart, my Mrs.

But there are EVs from the major automakers already, and as you state the game will change when these get serious. Mercedes’ claim that they will stop using ICE engines in the not too distant future is one pretty strong signal.

I’d say 3-5 years, not 5-15.

Speaking for myself, I’m not counting glorified three-wheeled golf cart science projects as vehicles. At that point, you might as well ride a bicycle. Most consumers seem to share my view. As far as I understand, ZAP’s offerings aren’t taking the US by storm. Admittedly, neither will the Tesla Roadster. That’s because EVs aren’t there yet.

And when they are, Ford and the others will be happy to bang them out. Why wouldn’t they? Once mass-market EVs are technically feasible, economically viable and profitable, and with a gas-strapped American public screaming for EVs, of course they will. And if one or two of the big boys are slow to get in the game, they’ll get killed in the marketplace by the others.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not by any means anti-EV. Quite the contrary. I’d love to own one myself. But the mass-market EV is still a few years off. Batteries still need increased energy density, longer life, faster recharges, and much lower price points. I’m sure they’ll get there, though. I’m guessing 5-15 years.

In other words, the EVs that exist, that have the range and that are presently rolling on roads, are a figment of my imagination?

Musk picked the wrong platform – where the battery’s shortcomings would be the most obvious. It got a lot of attention, and orders, but it’s proving to be a tougher call than he ever guessed. They’re assembling these Veyron-style, and stating that parts will be replaced down the line …

A small, Neighborhood Vehicle+++ platform was easily within his reach, but that wasn’t sexy enough.
Strange, PayPal grew big on small amounts being transacted — imagine if it had limited itself to a USD1000 minimum. :-)
Ford grew big on …

Not currently possible, given the cost of the battery. There’s arguably enough financial room to shoehorn the battery into a $109,000 car, but nowhere near enough to put it in a $25,000 soccer-mom hauler.

Maybe in the next 5-15 years, if all goes well, that will be possible. However, at that point the big boys will be more than happy to step in and stamp out such cars by the millions.

Once you look past the method of propulsion, Tesla is a boutique auto manufacturer, more akin to Lamborghini than GM. Lamborghini exists in the same universe as GM, Toyota, Honda etc by offering an exclusive premium product at a high markup. Branding issues aside, if Lamborghini ever decided to try producing an entry-level car, they’d get killed, by economy of scale if nothing else.

So it goes with Tesla. I think their best shot is to stay upstream. I hope they don’t get too far away from that.

Using solar panels to power an electric vehicle is the right idea — and now that scientists have developed plate glass windows that generate ten times as much electricity as regular silicon based solar panels you can even expect an increase in that range estimate.

If Musk had focused on a platform of EVs that would have a large customer base, instead of this squared circle vanity vehicle, he’d be on his way now.

Yes, I’ll be in Toronto on July 29 if everything goes according to plan. You know VIPs though, the schedule can change any time. SO NO PROMISES.

1. Adam Smith – ever heard of him?
2. David Ricardo – ever heard of him either?
3. Now that you’re retired, do you plan to get your GED?

Wow, that was the worst interview I’ve ever seen Fareed do. I have a great deal of respect for him. He normally goes after politicians with tough questions. Perhaps he just felt out of his element there. I mean presented with a salesman like Elon, how could he not want to dig a little deeper into those claims?

You may not believe this, but I wasn’t offended by the interviewer’s underhand lobs. There wasn’t much he could do; space was strictly limited (so to speak) and Q & A is the weakest of all possible journalistic formats.

Normally, the actual conversation upon which the finished article is based is both wide-ranging and specific. And then the interviewer/editor distills the content to a highly-polished form. And then, frequently, lamentably, the subject is allowed to scan the result to make sure it “accurately reflects” his or her opinions.

No matter how you slice it, the Q & A is a fundamentally misleading way of presenting information. Although it’s supposedly a verbatim conversation, it isn’t. And something is always lost on the cutting room floor.

Our Canadian Correspondent Samir Syed has landed an interview with Basil “Buzz” Hargrove for TTAC (we’ll have it at month’s end). Samir asked if he could write it up Q & A-style. To which I replied HELL NO.

Musk has already commented that this idea doesn’t make sense when you work out the cost versus the benefit.

I hope it works better than the car this time.