This is actually one of the better NYT articles I’ve read in recent memory as well. Actual investigative journalism. Amazing! Even though he blindly cheerleads for the Volt, Nocera is right. There is a much better chance of GM developing a Volt by 2010 (cough) than Tesla developing an all electric, $60k, all electric, mass market vehicle, that is practicle and reliable, by 2010. This vehicle would already be durability testing and getting final grain on the dash by now rather than not existing in any form at all.

I agree with David Dennis, Martin Eberhard had a solid business plan, to build the roadster with minimal changes to the AC Propulsion/Lotus designs. I also don’t think Musk is actually trying to pull off a scam. I think he really believes he can do this. His ego is simply too huge to face reality or to even take into consideration that he is deviating from reality.

I think we have to call Tesla an honest, good faith effort to deliver cars. After all, they are now delivering cars. Simple enough. They are not a deliberate scam.

They may be misguided. They may not be able to build WhiteStar, at least not in the way they are currently promising. I think they are fools to think that they can engineer a nearly all original car with the time and money constraints they have.

I think Martin’s business plan, which was just to build the Roadster and to continue building Roadsters for the foreseeable future, was sound. I think it’s true that they managed to push Chevy into building the Volt, and that’s an impressive tactical achievement even if they never manage to get WhiteStar on the ground.

Congratulations to Martin, and to everyone who made his Tesla a reality. I hope Martin can get back into the electric car biz. He deserves much success.

D

Actually, if hybrids and EVs really take off, you can expect companies to refurbish batteries just like you can get a remanufactured alternator. When a multicell battery can no longer perform adequately that doesn’t mean that 100% of the cells are defective. Many of the cells still have a usable life. I expect companies will go through the individual Li-ion cells, recover the cells that still have a usable life and remanufacture battery packs out of those cells to sell at a discount from the price of new batteries. I believe there are already companies selling refurbished rechargeable batteries for things like portable tools.

“My daily commute was 37 miles one way,” wrote a man named Michael Posner on a Web site called The Truth About Cars, who drove an EV1 for several weeks back in 1997. “Every trip was loaded with drama,” he added. “If I went to lunch, I gave up a few precious miles. That could mean disaster.” At General Motors, they took to calling this problem “range anxiety.” Is it any wonder the car didn’t catch on?

1997 General Motors EV-1 Review by Michael Posner July 4, 2008

Nocera oddly leaves out the fact that Tesla isn’t even building a complete car, but is rather re-powering an existing design. Much of the heavy lifting is being done by long time contract engineering and manufacturing experts-for-hire at Lotus. The amount of money Tesla has burned in it’s quest is huge compared to what they have actually done.

As to the battery pack, Tesla uses 6,831 cells of approximately AA size to build their battery pack. The Prius uses 38 battery modules, each of which is a custom packaging of 6 underlying battery cells for a total of 228 cells, but built in 38 sub-units. The Prius battery pack is built from the ground up as a custom design by Panasonic, while the Tesla battery pack lashes 6,831 Taiwan sourced open market batteries into a big 1,000 lb. brick. It is, in fact, fair to call Tesla’s approach sub-optimal from an engineering perspective. But then, Tesla’s founders are not real development engineers. Making a fortune selling PayPal to eBay hardly means you have what it takes to make a great automobile.

Also, good work getting a mention in the NYT, it’s always nice to get a mention in Ye Olde Media, especially in a paper as big as the NYT.

http://www.thunder-sky.com/products_en.asp

I think the more important item to focus on is the quote: “On a degree of difficulty scale, building a sports car is a 2. Building a high-volume affordable car is a 10.” He’s not referring to the requisite engineering – he’s referring to the difference in the business plans to execute production.

It seems like all those investors in Tesla believe there is a simple leap to go from low volume electrics to high volume electrics and still sustain reasonable profitability. I’m not sure they’ve realized how engineering is only a small piece of the pie at a volume-automaker.

“Tesla’s solution in the Roadster — tying together thousands of small batteries into one giant one — is ’suboptimal.’ “

I call BS on this statement!

Even the Prius makes use of many small batteries. Don’t know how many, if it’s hundreds or thousands, but it’s ridiculous to make the statement that many small batteries is suboptimal.