This car is a thing of beauty inside and out. Zero emission, state of the art safety, comfort, and competitively priced with other luxury sedans. For those who can afford $60-70K cars and are still driving 100-year-old combustion engines–this is what leadership looks like. Quiet as an ipad and faster than an Aston Martin…
Here is a direct link to the feature video.
2012: The Year of Model S from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.
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I would be more impressed if it was more affordable like under 30,000.
The promo is great, but can the batteries on this model be accidentally bricked like on the roadster. Since they avoided publicly acknowledging the problem in the roadster who knows?
What did it cost the roadster owner, something like $20,000 in battery replacement. As for the environment, bricked battery packs are toxic.
As it so happens, yesterday there was a Tesla roadster parked just down the street from my place, black, top off. Now that was a thing of beauty.
If you order the S for the family sedan, in 10 years you will have an old and pitted S sedan worth maybe$10K, in todays dollars. That is provided the road salt doesn’t destroy the sophisticated technology before then.
If you are right and “that is the future” instead of buying the car you could buy the stock (TSLA) , nearly a double from the IPO in 2010.
Another thing of beauty…..
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=TSLA&p=D&yr=3&mn=0&dy=0&id=p07348538834
You have got to be joking!
1.) Limited range.
2.) Limited battery life, must be replaced every five years. Plus they cost a fortune!
3.) Batteries are lithium and explode when exposed to air or water, if one becomes defective and starts a fire (just ask GM) they are like burning jelly.
4.) Fire department WILL NOT put out ANY electric car fires due to electric shock.
5.) Lithium come from one country only….Bolivia!
6.) You need 25 LB of cobalt to make on of these cars, which comes from only one place. Yes you guessed it “The Congo”, where the warlords fight over it.
7.)Try getting this car fixed anywhere but Tesla, most mechanics won’t touch it.
In general this is the stuff from liberal fantasy land. This car is NOT green or clean. It’s just a fad.
Chevy had to stop production of the volt for a few weeks because of low demand. None of the electric cars are selling particularly well. Even hybrids make up less than 3% of the car market.
Looks good. What about the maintenance costs?
My Honda Civic runs great at 50 km/gallon on the open road while I rarely use it in the city – bus, skytrain, bike or walking is good for me. This keeps the wear and tear – brakes for example – at a minimum. I went 12,000 kms before my dashboard oil change light went on.
And where does the electricity needed to power these cars come from ? By “combusting” natural gas, anyone ?
it will be in time as with every other product.
sure…but oil isn’t? There are costs and benefits to balance in every energy source.
ok no worries, you can stay there in the cave…those that want to evolve will be over here driving to the future.
yes the Volt is a hunk of junk. Tesla shamed GM and Ford into developing hybrid/electric cars. But they do so reluctantly, half-heartedly because they are vested in antiquated status quo ideas. Not surprisingly their products have been losing market share for years and years now. This is a story of evolve or die. More taxpayer funded bailouts for stubborn, non-competitive automakers anyone?
yes the electric car is one part of the equation. The other is developing more clean energy sources to fuel the plug. I already buy our energy from an alternative energy broker. But one does not defeat the other, we need both parts for the solution. On the other hand “a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still”. Evolve or die. I choose evolve.
Well here in the cave we work in the electronics/automotive businesses. We actually understand how these cars/machines/systems are designed & produced including the procurement of materials. Subsidies direct and indirect from both government and industry float the Tesla boat. It takes twice as much energy to produce this vehicle as any other car on the road! Plus the fact many exotic materials are need to make this car function. Another fact most people forget, where are you going to get the electricity from? Most likely coal or nuclear, now that’s clean safe energy. Don’t even think about solar, at 23% efficiency it’s not a solution at all. How about a real solution like Thorium and the development of clean liquid fuels? Yes the fuels that the Chinese and Indians are developing in a major way. So you go ahead and keep buying those electric cars and solar panels. I LOVE working on these projects, not only are they interesting but incredibly lucrative in the pursuit of waste!
there are no road blocks, only solutions.
“Tesla shamed GM and Ford into developing hybrid/electric cars.”
WRONG! The big three car companies have been perusing the development of alternative vehicles for some time. In the 1970’s it was the stirling engine, both AMC & Ford spent millions developing this idea.
http://green.autoblog.com/2009/07/08/blast-from-the-past-nasas-stirling-powered-amc-spirit/
In the late 90’s GM had the EV1 trials in California. This particular vehicle was developed by Hughes aerospace for GM and was a technological miracle for the time .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
Tesla is no more than a system integrator, nothing more! They design nothing and purchase everything they need from other companies. In fact the electric motor and power electronics are purchased from a company called AC propulsion. AC propulsion could not exist without the funding from GM, Ford, Chrysler,VW, BMW, MB among others. Development which has been ongoing since 1992!
http://www.acpropulsion.com/
SO……..foot in mouth and chew.
there are no road blocks, only solutions.
Agree, lets peruse solutions that have a chance of being useful to the world. The government funded fantasy always ends the same way. Waste at taxpayers expense.
P.S. The Volt is crap and the battery sometimes explodes in a fireball. It’s made in China, the Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank.
If you are wealthy, or have good credit and no idea what “wasting money” means, then by all means do buy one of these cars. It IS a cool car for in-town use, and Tesla should be congratulated for the engineering used to produce it – IF it turns out to be reliable for 250K miles. I’d buy one if I had my retirement funded, but I don’t. Until your retirement is fully funded, you cannot even consider buying this vehicle.
A Honda Civic will reliably go over 200K miles with no problem if it is maintained and not abused. They cost too much today but even at ~$17K are less than 1/3 the cost of a Tesla and the gas models will get ~ 40 mpg. Yet more than half of the people here in the USA prefer gas hogs, even with $4+ gasoline.
What I’d like to see is for Honda to produce the 1996 Honda Civic hatchback again, exactly as it was, (minor improvements would be OK), and sell it at low cost – say $12K or something like that. I suspect it would be BY FAR the most popular vehicle sold in the world. People WANT a vehicle that is reliable, gets good mileage, and is not too expensive. If Honda made the 1996 again, I’d buy one the first day they were on the market. I doubt Honda could produce enough of them to meet demand.
Because I do quite a bit of long distance driving, and cannot afford a separate vehicle for in-town use I will never purchase an electric vehicle – with the possible exception of an electric bicycle or motorcycle that I might be able to afford.
Another thing I’ve been wondering about: Honda is well known for making reliable cars. What’s a little strange to me is that you rarely see the old Insight hybrids on the road now. I’m talking the ones made back in the late 90’s that achieved ~70 mpg on the highway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight
There is a rare one around but not very many. I think replacing the batteries was about $5k. Maybe that has something to do with it? Or were the gas engines not reliable?
The most pressing problem with electricity is that we need to solve the storage problem. Electricity needs to be consumed the moment it’s produced. If there’s a way to produce electricity now, store it for say one, two or more days or weeks and then consume it when needed, then that would be a MAJOR breakthrough.
Until then “Alternative energy” is for me is bit too much “Pie in the sky”. Yes, we need evolution but that takes (A LOT OF) time. And the credit crisis won’t help either.
As long as the government does not mandate the use of electric cars they will succeed or fail on their own merit. That is how technology progresses.