Tesla Motors says it's taken 350 deposits for their Lotus Elise-based, lithium ion-propelled, $92k Roadster. Despite this success, Tesla's hyper-exotic may offer more hype than hope. The company won't allow expert evaluation of their product until it's "ready for market." Even before they've delivered a single Roadster, they're promising two additional, mass market electric vehicles– whose enabling technology is, at best, under-developed. Meanwhile, they've raised $60m in venture capital and secured $20m in state subsidies to build a New Mexican factory. To find out if the Tesla Roadster is keeping it real for planet Earth, or DeLorean/Tucker redux, we sent our man Shoemaker to Tesla for a "test drive."
Jay reports that the carbon fiber Tesla is far more attractive than the fiberglass Elise. Lotus’ engineers added two inches to the Elise’s wheelbase to holster Tesla's LiIon batteries and attendant cooling and heating gear. Lotus' boffins also lowered the sports car’s door sills and modified all the bodywork, adding Tesla-specific design cues. The finished Roadster includes 2.5mph bumpers, HID headlights and all LED rear lights.
Shoes says the new dimensions and finely rendered jewelry (e.g. the distinctive hood motif and the taillights standing proud from the body) transform the British sports car’s look from insectoid to exotic. There's a bit of Ferrari F355, a bit of Lotus Europa, a lot of style. It’s no wonder the Tesla Roadster has become the plug-in poster boy.
Jay also reports that the Roadster’s interior is so Elise it hurts. Literally.
Tesla modded the cabin to appease their upmarket customers. They’ve widened the narrow seats and fitted them with “the finest space-age foam available.” They carpeted the floor, leather-trimmed the door panels and Blaupunked the ICE. The overall effect is like adding a space heater to a drafty classroom. “If it holstered a small block Chevy, the Roadster would be the official car of ‘The 300.’”
Instead, the Roadster houses 6831 lithium ion cells. The battery pack weighs 900 pounds and costs $20k to replace (try not to misplace it Bond). Tesla rates the four pole electric motor at 248 horsepower. It can be charged in six hours (if your home has 30 – 40 Amps of power) or as little as three hours (if you’re rigged with 90 Amps). Although the Roadster’s maximum range is 250 miles, the company says spirited driving will yield “substantially less.”
Before we share Shoemaker’s “driving” impressions, keep in mind that all these numbers reflect Tesla's ambitions, not demonstrable reality. Again, no independent organization has evaluated any aspect of the Roadster's performance or construction. While Tesla Motors is happy admitting their Roadster's range could be “substantially less” than advertised, anyone thinking about buying a Roadster should consider those words carefully. Would you purchase a sports car that can only drive 90 miles between 12 hour recharges?
Tesla admirers/intenders also note: our man was not allowed behind the wheel. Indeed, all Tesla’s media coverage has been carefully supervised and controlled. While "you can't touch this" restrictions are not unknown in an industry that produces million dollar plus prototypes, there are plenty of electric car companies happy to let responsible journos do what responsible journos are supposed to do.
Tesla says the Roadster sprints from zero to 60mph in about four seconds, which would make it faster than the Elise. According to Shoemaker, the Roadster felt every bit as quick as his E63 AMG. The Roadster's all-electric engine doesn’t free wheel, so the car slows when pressure diminishes on the accelerator. Although the Roadster doesn’t generate any engine noise and very little transmission whine, Shoes says there’s virtually no insulation from significant road or wind noise.
In terms of handling, “fast and darty sums it up.” Tesla says that although the Roadster’s batteries add 25 percent to the weight of the elongated Elise; the weight distribution is still 40 – 60 front to rear. Jay says the Tesla Roadster’s low center of gravity and relative light weight maintain the Lotus’ slot car handling. The Roadster uses regenerative braking; as a passenger, Jay couldn’t rate the system’s feel or effectiveness.
The enthusiastic staff at Tesla Motors describes the Roadster’s selling proposition as “performance without guilt.” But if you set aside the media’s PC fawning over an eco-friendly sports car, there are serious questions about the Roadster’s ability to deliver on its manufacturer's promises.
For example, Tesla says its engineers have placed the Roadster’s LiIon batteries away from each other in steel and aluminum containers. Even so, if one of its batteries ignites, it could cause a virtually unstoppable series of fires and/or explosions. Roadster deliveries are now scheduled for fall; federal approval for the vehicle has not yet been granted.
Safety, range, reliability, recharge time, battery life, build quality, manufacturing costs– Tesla has yet to prove that they’ve overcome any of these obstacles for their lightweight Roadster (never mind their planned family car). Until they do, until they allow the press to thoroughly evaluate the car’s real world capabilities, their Roadster should be viewed as nothing more than another well-meaning concept car. Or, if you prefer, a fabulous toy.
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Good point Robert. I’m afraid I had initially gotten caught up in the idea of a high performance, Elise-like, electric car, but the reality, as you have stated, is that the concept is still entirely unproven. Hopefully the Tesla Roadster makes good on the hype, as it would then embody an exciting technological step forward. I guess we’ll all see later this year…maybe.
Being a child of the 1980s, all I can do is quote O.M.D.:
Tesla girls, tesla girls
Testing out theories
Electric chairs and dynamos
Dressed to kill they’re killing me
But heaven knows their recipe
They’re still not letting anyone else drive the car, not even a potential customer like Jay? Wow.
Since I’ve driven an Elise and it made my rough, noisy Protege5 feel like a Lincoln Navigator, I love the “like setting up a space heater in a drafty classroom” analogy.
So I take it the center console still has a considerable amount of lateral wobble?
For what its worth, I have seen their design/manufacturing facility and spoken at length with their chief mechanical engineer and came away very impressed. Unfortunately, I was also denied the ride and drive.
I always remember when the UK magazine “Car”, which was pretty damn good, produced a whole article about the the 1988 Lotus Elan, about a year before it was launched.
My, how they gushed.
A friend of mine was very interested, he asked me, were the prototypes /that/ good? No, sadly, the journos had not driven a car. They hadn’t even sat in one for a hot lap. Journalism at its best.
Is a matching Nomex suit available?
More seriously, what is the spontaneous rate of catastrophic failure in a lithium-ion cell? I’m guessing its one in 20 million+ based on the little I read in the tech blogs, but perhaps someone in the know can say?
350 Tesla Roadsters = 2.39 million cells.
Just their choice of batteries and the over-the-top measures to keep them “safe” speaks of an initally good idea being rushed to market (to satisfy investors?). I’ll wait for the $25K “safer-battery” version (Prius Roadster, anyone?)
starlightmica:
As Dell will tell you, improperly designed or poorly manufactured LiIon batteries have a nasty tendency to burst into flames. Experts estimate the chances of a lithium ion battery fire are one in ten million. Tesla says it will build 1325 Roadsters by the end of ’08. Achieving that goal would require 9,051,075 LiIon batteries.
If one of those nine million batteries ignites…
Sounds to me like another Tucker or Davis. using unproved technology in utter secrecy. If you have something good you would not keep it under wraps before you launch. Especially in this day in age when “buzz” is so important.
Finally, someone reaches in and finds out that the Emperor really isn’t wearing any clothes.
The Tesla is a perfect example of just how gullible and technically uneducated, the popular media really are.
These are the same people who are giving “A convenient lie” enough credibility to vault Al Gore into the Presidential race.
Wow, all this biatch-slap of reality and we didn’t even make it to the point that the electricity is dirty and only makes sense if (a) you are in an area that receives 100% nuke/hydro/wind power and/or (b) you’re an ostrich-headed NIMBY “environmentalist”
philbaily: A better example of the uneducated popular media is fuel cells.
Tesla is currently unable to prove their claims independently. That hardly qualifies as a lie, or failure. After launch, their ambitions will be proven or disproven pretty quickly. They have every right to be paranoid and cagey for now.
The best way for American automaking to survive is with a high-tech startup, away from Detroit, with fresh leadership and engineering. The other option is that the taxpayers can just bail Detroit out over and over.
An expensive toy? Well, sure, isn’t that kind of the point? A small number of people with a large amount of money will buy it because it makes them feel good about themselves. If someone wants to drop $100K on a tempermental, expensive-to-own electric exotic car rather than a tempermental, expensive-to-own conventional exotic car, what’s the harm in it?
RF –
I see on the Tesla FAQ that they’ve intentionally set a cell on fire within the battery pack to make sure that it’s contained.
http://www.teslamotors.com/engineering/safety.php?js_enabled=1
Brendan:
Point taken. This is precisely the argument Tesla used with me when I confronted them on these issues: judge us when we're ready. Yes but…
The company is already soaking up a LOT of OPM (Other People's Money), including the taxpayers of New Mexico. When Tucker went belly-up, the company lost Shoemaker's boss' father's cash. When DeLorean's dream died, lots of people were hurt.
Caveat emptor? OK. But Tesla's taking investment money that might have helped more established and transparent companies that have a better chance of achieving the goal of a practical electric car for the masses.
Also, they are not shy about making claims. These claims are being reported as fact. These facts may not be realized. If they aren't true, if Tesla sinks under the weight of its own ambitions, it could put potential consumers off the whole electric car concept.
Perhaps it's a question of style, rather than a lack of substance. I hope so, but the question should be raised. For the media to jump on the Tesla bandwagon without questioning the company and product's viability is an abrogation of their journalistic responsibilities.
starlightmica:
Setting a single cell on fire is not the same as running the car into a barrier at speed. Or proper NHTSA side and (especially) rear crash tests. I will believe that the vehicle is safe when the feds pronounce it so.
But does the vagueness of Tesla’s text bother anyone else?
“Tesla Motors’s engineers selected cells from a reputable Fortune 500 battery supplier.”
“We then collaborated with an outside firm known for expertise in lithium ion battery safety to perform hundreds of tests to validate the safety of our design.”
Proprietary information? Perhaps. But that’s not the way these things are usually done by the serious players.
Following the link from starlightmica, there’s this:
That’s nice – no rotating tires for you, little sportscar!
FreeMan–
There’s no tire rotation on a lot of cars. Unidirectional tread with different width tires front/rear means no rotation. Corvettes, vipers, etc…
IMO, the 1st true electric car will be from Honda, the greenest of all automakers and the one that always delivers on its promise. If Honda cannot (yet), no one else can do it safely or reliably or economically.
RF -
For better or for worse, it’s the penalty of being the leader. The Tesla won’t have any problems passing the federal crash tests thanks to lots of computer simulations, but all it takes is one bad unforseen hit from a tractor trailer to splatter the bad news everywhere, because it will be the first.
Contrast that with the previous Mustang: a picture of a 50mph rear-ended SN95 Mustang convertible graced the front page of blueovalnews.com a while back. The ‘Stang had but empty air where the trunk and fuel tank were previously located, with a gallon of fuel leaked and the doors jammed shut. Yes, people have been burned alive, and Google turns articles about this, but I doubt this is well known.
starlightmica:
Don’t be so sure about those NHTSA crash tests. The feds are rigorous and diligent in their work, and they use real cars, not simulations (if that’s what you meant).
Yes, but NHTSA also gives freebies to manufacturers that somehow show that US jobs are at stake if they are forced to throw their car against the wall.
Example? Elise.
We rightfully bash GM for a lot of things they do, but you do have to give them credit for putting effort/time/money into things outside the mainstream once in a while. The EV1 for example (though driven by California’s mandate.)
My point is, that GM is saying that the current state of battery technology does not allow the Volt to become reality. In fact, it seems the Volt was simply a publicity stunt that got out of hand.
So, if GM (and Toyota) do not feel that electric cars are ready for the road en masse, how is it that a startup with very limited resources (relatively) can do it? Yes – unlimited creativity, forward thinking, hard work, dedication – all things that are typically stifled in a large corporation.
But still, if it was ready to go I gotta believe Toyota or Honda or GM would be doing it, if only for the “green” halo effect.
Might as well make the wheels out of magnesium for further weight savings. Would also add to the light show if the battery pack does flare up.
Sid:
“if it was ready to go I gotta believe Toyota or Honda or GM would be doing it”
The only reason I question that is that those are mass-market companies locked into their own assumptions about what consumers will and won’t buy. From what I read here and on other sites, it sounds like an all-electric vehicle with a 100 mile range from an overnight charge for around $20K is probably feasible. GM, Toyota et. al. rightly conclude that doesn’t sound like a value proposition that’s going to talk many Americans out of an Impala or Camry for their next ride. And they can’t operate producing cars that only a few thousand people will buy. Weren’t annual sales of the Insight something like 3,000 units?
I have no idea if Tesla’s cars are for real, but one thing they did right was to start with a very small, very profitable niche market. If the things work at all, they’ll sell a few hundred to wealthy indviduals who want to make a point, do something to feel good about themselves, or just have a cool new toy their friends don’t have. It sounds like their plan is to use the money from the roadster to continue developing the “real world” car. Or maybe just sell it to a company that can actually manufacture, market and distribute in scale. Either way, what comes next will be interesting.
It wasn’t very long ago that the world was going to be saved by a magical device from Dean Kamen. John Doerr of venture capital fame and Jeff Bezos of Amazon did their role in hyping “IT” before anyone knew what “IT” was. In 2001 “IT” finally appeared in the form of the constantly hyped Segway electric scooter. Laws were changed around the world to enable a new more efficient future. Countless news stories were printed and aired. But in the end, almost nobody buys the silly things and the first generation was recalled 100% at least once. I bet that many Tesla intenders already of a Segway, and never use it.
It is bad enough that we have self-igniting cell phones and laptops on the market now. Lithium ion batteries in cars strikes me as a horrible idea.
By the way, how long do you think it will be until a hydrogen fueled car does a Hindenberg?
BTW, another interesting automotive start-up is Carbon Motors in Georgia. They intend to make a purpose built police car.
http://www.carbonmotors.com/
Good points, hadn’t really thought of them in regards to the Tesla although a 90k toy isn’t in my future anyway. The question I have is doesn’t making an electric sports car with no conventional motor, no exhaust and I guess no need to shift defeat the entire purpose of a sports car to begin with?
This sounds for all the world like the late, and unlamented Shelby Series 1. Fortunately the Tesla was not beat with the same ugly stick.
Note:
1) The company that provides the batteries for Tesla is also “under serious consideration” to provide batteries for a new plug-in vehicle by GM.
2) Collaborating with Lotus has its pros (weight, dynamics) and cons (build quality). For a pioneering supertoy for wealthy techno geeks (give me some money and count me in), the level of forgiveness for the latter should be pretty high.
Farago – This at best is a muckraking piece which does a fine job at slinging FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). The whole point was to criticize Tesla before it’s even in the marketplace, right? I thought this was ‘The “Truth” about Cars’ not The Negative Conjecture about Cars.
Your first gripe is that you can’t drive it whenever you request to. I didn’t know that journalist had a god given right to drive whatever un-launched car they wanted to. How well does it work when you demand that Toyota give you a preproduction car to review? Does BMW or GM do that for you? I doubt it. Obviously Tesla has some bugs to work out, but they don’t want a blog to pass judgment on a work that is still in progress.
Next you hammer them on the possibility that the battery could ignite. Do you have any inside knowledge of the safety systems that Tesla has implemented or are you assuming that the highly educated engineers are just throwing batteries into a box and hoping for the best? News flash: Did you know that gasoline is highly explosive? Holy crap! They use this explosive the current cars. Let’s condemn all cars.
Hey gents,
I’ve got alot of thoughts on this that I’ll try to compress into a short period of space:
1. Tesla’s in a tough spot. They are trying to build a limited production vehicle using advanced technology and have limited funds and resources to do it. Therefore, they need tons of good publicity (to keep the money flowing) but can’t reveal much of their technology for fear of competition. If Toyota/Honda truely got involved or saw a profit from this venture, they have alot more money and manpower and would hurt Tesla’s upstart effort.
2. I believe I just read that Tesla sent 2 cars to be crash tested. This indicates readiness. I didn’t search for the source, so my apologies if I’m wrong on this information
3. This, to my knowledge, is the first all-electric sports car. And it’s seriously capable, if it’s doing 0-60 in 4.0. I wouldn’t want it put in the hands of journalists yet either. They need nothing but glowing publicity right now, because (see #1) they need money and suspense.
4. Range: Lets say with conservative driving you get 250 miles, and aggressive driving you get 100. I don’t know about you guys, but I get about 250 miles to one tank in my 06 Honda Civic SI under back-road driving fairly aggressive. I can get it to under 200 when alot of aggression. My car doesn’t offer the same level of performance. If the Tesla can get 100 miles when driven in serious anger, then it is a success to me. How many miles can that RS4 go?
This is a sports car, utilizing new technology. Sure, you’ll get some owners that don’t realize they can’t bomb up and down the California coast all day, and get stuck out there….but range, as long as it’s 100 miles of “spirited” driving, is good enough.
5. I pray Tesla has a fire supression system in place, and that they offer free replacement for a few years on any failed battery packs. This would be responsible, and show maturity and long-term seriousness.
I’ll give Tesla credit for doing something that’s pretty freaking hard. They are a start-up company operating with new technology in a hot market (read: buzz for all-electric). They are dangerously close to delivering a product that meets alot of their original claims; claims that were made probably in the earliest of prototype phases. 0-60 in 4.0 and can be recharged at home in a reasonable amount of time.
Joe O.
New-Thinker:
I think Robert’s point is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Tesla is making some rather bold claims about its product, but when asked for some seat time, Tesla refuses. This should be worrying to him and anyone considering buying one; if the car is really that great, they would be practically begging auto journalists to take it for a spin, knowing they’ll rave about it later.
BTW, yes, gasoline is explosive, but it is at least a known danger. LiIon batteries are relatively new to us. It’s worth noting that if gasoline-powered cars didn’t exist already, they would never be introduced today. Threat of litigation would scare the car companies completely away from dangerous, highly explosive gasoline. It’s a different world today.
This product isn’t entirely far-fetched as it sounds. There are a few warranty-voiding enterprises willing to convert your Prius into a fully-electric, plug-in vehicle. The fact that Tesla’s using a Lotus platform indicates that there more than a few knowns about this car.
It’s Tesla’s over-protective, secretive attitude that worries me, not because it could lead to this roadster’s failure, but if the car falls short of its promises (or worse), the company’s hopes of producing mass-market cars would evaporate overnight. The general public would be firmly sceptical (or scared) of the technology, and that would make things difficult for the mainstream automakers.
The world needs motoring alternatives, let’s hope Tesla doesn’t mess things up for Toyota, Honda, GM’s Volt, and the like.
Joe O: 4. Range: Lets say with conservative driving you get 250 miles, and aggressive driving you get 100. I don’t know about you guys, but I get about 250 miles to one tank in my 06 Honda Civic SI under back-road driving fairly aggressive
But when you empty the tank in your SI, you can refill it in a matter of minutes at a number of convenient locations. When the Tesla's "tank" is empty it takes hours to "refill" after you find somewhere to plug it in. That seriously limits its usefulness to nothing more than a limited-range toy. And unless they can overcome this limitation before they bring out their sports sedan (codename Whitestar), it won't find a very large audience either.
Posted by Darryl SIry: VP Marketing at Tesla
I think we are the only company that allows a very large number of people to take rides in the Engineering Prototypes and gives tours in their facility. We also spend a lot of time on the phone talking to people like Robert Farago and many others giving them as much information as we can about our progress. We have a corporate blog that goes into a great amount of detail as to this progress as well, and answers many of the questions (and speculations) raised here. This is about as transparent as a car company can be at this stage of product development. It’s not accurate to say we are vaporware, especially since your guy showmaker was at our facility and took a ride in the EP.
It is accurate to say that we have not yet offered a car to automotive journalists for independent verification of the performance. That is because we are at the EP stage of development, and no company has ever done that. It isn’t wise to hand over early stage prototypes for evaluation since they are not yet fully developed and quite expensive if crashed. First drives are usually offered to the press when the Validation Prototype” is ready for prime time. In between that is a lot of engineering and refinement.
Our first VP is in San Carlos now. When I get my VPs (numbers 9 and 10) and when we have the car in full pre-production readiness, I will happily hand over the keys for third party validation. I will do that as soon as possible, probably late summer.
I told Robert Farago all this in a lengthy phone call.
Bottom line is that serious car makers follow a lengthy process of product development with multiple stages of prototype development before the cars are ready for prime time. That is what we are doing.
On Crash Testing:
We have already crash tested our EPs as a natural course of development – and they performed very well. You can find a blog that goes into great detail on the crash tests that include photos on the Tesla blog (http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=28)
We plan to crash another 4 VPs to verify conformance with the Federally Mandated Vehicle Safety Standards. Contrary to Robert’s comments above, no one hands cars to the “feds” for them to crash. The government sets standards that you must demonstrate compliance to with your own testing. The manufacturer certifies that they meet all FMVSS requirements, not the government. Crash testing cars costs a lot of money. If we were a vaporware company we wouldn’t bother, would we?
On Batteries:
As another commenter pointed out, on our website you can learn that we have designed the ESS specifically to prevent any thermal runaway event in a cell from propagating to another cell in the pack. If a cell goes into thermal runaway the group of cells it belongs to will “drop off” the circuit and the driver will see a “check engine” light. If there is sufficient smoke in the pack the ESS will shut itself down. In either case there is little or no danger to the occupants. All of this is public information on our website and with the depth that Robert Farago went into reporting this piece (including an “inside” look), I wish he had read up on these issues before writing his piece.
As far as GM saying that the battery technology is not there yet – GM is setting out to build a series hybrid with the Volt. The battery requirements for a series hybrid are very different from a pure EV like the Tesla. They need cells with extremely high cycle life since their pack is small and will be discharged and recharged many more times over the same distance driven than the Tesla pack.
While on the subject – If anyone has the opportunity they can ask the GM team involved with Volt if they think Tesla is vaporware. They know enough about us to tell you their views.
Along with 250 optimal miles, I’d like to know how long the batteries last at WOT. That might be enough to judge the real-world range for yourself.
While I appreciate the need for a startup to keep a distance from journos and hard data, there’s a lot of money at stake here. Being a little more forthcoming about information presented here is a good idea.
I bet the folks in Dunmurry needed some of that from DeLorean.
I’ve been following the Tesla fairly closely for a while. I do think this piece has a bit of “Chicken Little” feeling to it.
There is no question that if Tesla fails to meet their claims by a material matgin, they will be a disappointment. But don’t worry about the poor investors; this is not a Tucker stock scheme.
The investors have plenty of money to play with. They’re like the prospective buyers – they can afford the possible risks.
Do you realize how much money is floating around silicon valley? I went back to Los Gatos recently – the Ford dealer went out of business, but there’s a full size Lamborghini showroom. As well as two other showrooms full of every exotic you could want to drool over.
You need to put the Tesla roadster in that context. Why worry about their rich kids’ toys. Are you going to cry for George Clooney if his Tesla only goes 200 miles?
BTW: Toyota has confirmed that Li-ion batteries will be in the next 2009 Prius. That says something about their readiness.
i suspect a lot more than one in 10 million gasoline powered cars end up in flames. i saw one yesterday at the side of I-95, in fact. will be expecting a big (well, 800 words anyway) follow up on the dangers of gasoline cars.
nice response by siry.
A final comment for now:
I think it is natural that we will have some people who are skeptical about the actual performance of our car until we have delivered cars to testers and to customers. That is why we have decided to be as transparent as we can about things, and go into depth on many of these issues on our website (www.teslamotors.com). Serious journalists who are skeptical of the company can get a lot of answers there and can call the company for more answers to their questions.
Sajeev:
I could see an ironic accessory: a 240V gas-powered generator compact enough to fit in the trunk to get you home from the track.
Ok here’s my take on this little toy. This is not the EV-1, it’s not a green grocery getter. It’s a high performance car in the $100,000 dollar range. Therefore, you’re going to want to take it to a track on occasion. So you show up at Nurburgring and you dazzle everyone with your 0-60 time out of the gate, you maybe even pass a Porche 911 Turbo or two. Then less than 8 laps into it you have to call the tow truck because you’re battery is dead and you are heading back to the hotel room for the night while the car recharges.
Are you f***ing kidding me?
ash78: .. and we didn’t even make it to the point that the electricity is dirty and only makes sense if (a) you are in an area that receives 100% nuke/hydro/wind power and/or (b) you’re an ostrich-headed NIMBY “environmentalist”
I assume you derive (b) from (a), however your (a) is largely incorrect :-)
Electric power is transmitted efficiently over thousands of miles by the high-voltage transmission grid. There’s really no such thing as a local area which supplies your energy; switch on another light and a little more energy is pulled from wherever it’s available (might be the other side of the country). As such, everyone shares the same mix of sources (coal, nuclear, hydro etc).
If every house in the US switched off a light at 10 pm, more than likely a couple of large coal-fired power stations somewhere would come off-line.
Another way of looking at it; when the 2000 MW power station down the road from your house has its annual maintenance shut-down, you still have power. It just comes from all the other power stations on the grid. Grids span continents (US and Canada are connected, as is most of Europe).
That’s simplified – but essentially correct.
It’s also not correct to think that thermal power stations (coal and natural gas) plus the associated transmission are as inefficient as a typical internal combustion engine and therefore no better from a CO2 or sulphate pollution perspective. Thermal power stations are generally more efficient (particularly modern combined-cycle gas turbine stations) and of course pollution mitigation is more practical at a small number of large producers.
I don’t mean to pick on your comment, but I often see this misconception, even on TTAC :-).
One big advantage of electric cars (or more likely plug-in hybrids) is that they will improve the economics of intermittent renewable energy sources (e.g. wind and solar), as they can store the cheap energy when it’s available. Most electrical energy is sold at a fixed price, irrespective of when you consume it. This favours predictable but expensive energy (nuclear, coal etc), over intermittent but unit-cheap energy (wind, solar, run-of-the-river hydro etc).
Electricity is sold in a very inefficient way – there’s effectively no price signal to match supply and demand in the short term. This disadvantages the cheap-get-it-while-its-available producers (wind, solar etc) and everyone pays more accordingly. Of course at the moment there aren’t a lot of uses of electricity which can store it until needed.
Plug-in hybrids and electric cars will change this. Of course, the one-price-whenever system will go and you’ll need an internet connection so your car plug-in hybrid decide when to recharge.
Apologies for the long posting.
Cheers
Malcolm
Perhaps when batteries get light enough to swap them out like you would on say, a cordless power tool, then this concept might fly.
Robert: you summed it up in your last three words: “a fabulous toy”. That’s what it is, and that’s how it’s being marketed. So what’s the problem?
If you had wanted to look for vaporware or questionable financing arrangements; there are other electric car companies out there that would have been much juicier plums: ZAP, Phoenix, etc.
The Tesla folks have been very smart and transparent, unlike much that has gone on in this sector before.
Tankd0g, Sajeev, Frank W: why are you bringing up the profoundly obvious issue of range and charge time? The buyers of the Tesla are intelligent enough to understand those realities. Tip: don’t buy one.
You guys are sounding a bit like what the folks probably sounded like in 1889 when Carl Benz had to buy fuel for his car at the drug store- dry cleaning fluid- because there were no gas stations. I’m sure they were naysaying him from their horse and buggies.
If Tesla were being financed through some government grant, and planning to sell millions to poor folks, I could begin to see some of your concerns. Let rich folks play with their Teslas, and very likely, we’ll all learn something useful from the exercise.
It’s a bit incorrect to say our power grid spans the entire continent. We have basically separate eastern and a western grids, with some very small back to back converter stations in between in places like Montana. I also think that plug in hybrids/total electric are going to exacerbate an existing problem: aging power infrastructure. Both the east and west coast have seen major outages, often precipitated by higher than normal loading and temperatures.
The problem with plug in vehicles is more social, than technical. Our current peak power demand comes as people head home. Firing up AC, ovens, lights, etc, put a huge demand on our transmission and generation infrastructure. Add in every Joe America coming home, plugging in his 90A/240V load (very substantial in a home so he can go out at might, and we will have a problem.
It’s easy to say, “build more generation”, but this is easy for Seattle, less so for Wyoming where the coal fired power plants are constructed. Add other problems, such as power corridors that are already at maximum capacity in the LA area, and we are looking at some rather serious technical problems. Much of the existing protection in this country is still using state of the art, 1960’s technology. Updating will be costly, and American consumers have shown they are very unwilling to pay for this in the form of a higher utility bill.
As an Electrical Engineer, I would love to be excited by electric vehicles, but I realize the future for them isn’t so rosy.
LastResort: The DOE has issued a report saying that the existing US grid can handle up to 185 million plug-in vehicles at night.
You’re right in that plugging in during “prime time” could be a problem. The electric companies are eager for this business, and smart meters are increasingly available. This would allow lower rates for night-time use. Europe has had these forever.
A smart plug that doesn’t turn on until the right hour would be a microchip away. Plug in when you come home, and the juice starts flowing at the pre-determined time.
LastResort,
Did you see the study by the DOE stating that the current grid could handle charging 180 Million plug-in vehicles at night? Sounds sufficient to me. Besides, even if the grid is strained in a few areas by America switching to plug-ins, there would be plenty of $ incentive for utilities to upgrade.
Additionally, there would be incentive for homeowners to install solar panels as their cost falls and government incentives rise (if only to avoid invovlement in another war in the MidEast).
siry:
So the reason you won't let journalists drive the Roadster on a closed course is…?
Never mind road testing your precious prototypes. How about proving that you can recharge the battery pack in three hours? Would you agree to let a mutually agreeable expert test that claim?
As for your assertions about the Roadster's safety, range, reliability and recharge times, they are just that: claims.
I hope Tesla produces a product that lives up to ALL your hopes, dreams and assertions. I admire your entrepreneurial spirit. But I reckon you've been given a free ride by the automotive press.
You want TTAC's respect? You've got to earn it. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you make your reputation by what you do, not what you say.
jinx!