GM has set its production date for its electric car the Chevy Volt for 2010. It expects the prototype to be finished in 2007. The production model will not look exactly like the prototype but the batteries can be recharded by the grid or the onboard charger. We do not know the
price but I would suspect that it will be near that of other ICE models. The Chevy Volt can be run off the onboard generator and will never
leave you without juice to get where you are going. You got 3 years to build a better electric car gentlemen.

This isn’t about pride or arrogance. It is simply a reflection of the realities of how we see our business. Tesla Motors is an OEM manufacturer of electric vehicles ..We follow an intensive product development process adapted from the same process used by the big boys in Detroit, whereby we develop prototype vehicles at great expense and then proceed to smash them in our safety testing and abuse them with durability tests.
Except, for all the talk, you still dont have a working product in customers hands. Get to that milestone, and you will gain a next level. Currently we, the public, know basically nothing about reliability, safety, service quality and so on, about Tesla Motors. There are only claims by you, the company. Most of us would like to believe that you are going to exceed our expectations, but those remain just expectations, for now.

So i would not be hard on the press, at a given time, for not always being able to distinguish your efforts and talk from other ( vapor, fake, or real ) players efforts and talk in the EV game. Not as long as there is only talk and shows, and no shipping product.

I am reposting my most pressing questions:
1) Roadster on race tracks, when ?
1a) Really independent Auto mag review. Full road testing. when ?
2) Roadster on major TV motorshows, Top Gear etc, when ?
3) Roadster in hands of first customers, when ?

The media and public officials alike. Almost every time I hear any politician (R or D) talk about the future of cars, it’s quite obvious that they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. At best, they’re regurgitating corporate talking points, and at worst they’re just plain making stuff up. Unfortunately, we as the public rely on both the media and our public officials for good information, and they are unable to supply it. It’s both embarrassing and disgusting, especially when they act like it will be all free benefit, no negative cost or any other kind of impact at all. (Discovery’s FutureCar was a huge disappointment in this arena. Talk about unknowledgable reporting! Perpetual motion? “Yuck”? Come on!)

Thank you for sharing your experiences with the press from the inside. You have your work cut out for you, and it’s quite obvious it’s a daunting task. Hopefully, you and others can truly get good information out to the media, the public, and the public officials, and we can have some real discussion about the future of cars.

I take it that I wasn’t the only one who found the ‘Future Cars’ segment on alternative fuel vehicles to be less than impressive. I was enjoying the sight of the Tesla Roadster being showcased until I saw that it was being compared side by side with an ‘airhead’ scheme like the compressed air vehicle. Not that I am totally turned off by compressed air. It shows great promise for the next 10th grade science fair. It is simple technology but the media never seems to understand and convey the laws of the conservation of energy. Even a special on the Science Channel didn’t seem know that “You cannot get something for nothing”. They continued to project the notion that since air is free, then the fuel is free. Quite simply the money, and energy, is in the compression. Just as hydrogen doesn’t have much energy itself, it can be compressed so that the small amout of energy it has can be multiplied by the amount of molecules one can fit in a small volume. It has low energy density when you burn it or run it through a cell. But if you fuse them together the mass is directly converted into energy.

Anyway, the media just needs to develop a standard list of question to ask every new alternative fuel technology. If they do, they will find most of them to be full of ‘hot air’

-JoeG

P.S. I was shocked and amazed to find out from the previous blog that many companies boast revolutionary new technologies just so they can scare larger corporations into buying them out. Wow… the media certainly needs to step up the game

Right on point. Another inane tendency of both the media and many contributors to this site is the questioning of the payback period for the Tesla roadster based on the estimated mpg benefit of the electric drive vs its purchase price. What nonsense! No one buying a Tesla roadster is doing so to save money on gas nor is worried about a payback period anymore than someone that buys a $450K McLaren SLR. Nobody selects options like navigation systems, sound systems, wheels, etc. on any other big ticket sports car by calculating a payback period. We buy Teslas and other expensive cars because we like the technology, the performance, or the conveniences offered. In the case of the Tesla roadster, there is also the additional feature that it will mark a historic turning point in the development of the automobile. There’s no way you need to calculate a payback period for that.

Darryl-

Stock dividends can be paid in various ways, including cash and/or stock. When a dividend is paid in cash, the shareholders typically get a cut of the profits, or perhaps a chunk of a recent windfall. In the particular case you are discussing, however, the “10 % dividend” was paid in stock: someone who held 10 shares before the payout would have 11 shares today.

This could certainly look like dilution (or, perhaps, an 11 to 10 stock split), but it is not, as long as the shares are not created anew. A company might own a significant number of shares of its own stock, for instance, and transfer those shares to other stockholders as part of a dividend scheme, just as it might divide up a chunk of profit or other assets.

As far as whether or not anyone is being taken in by the statements of publicly traded EV companies, it is worthwhile to note that shares of the particular stock you are thinking of are now traded at less than 1/3 the value that they had only a year ago. In the same period, that company was also delisted from a major exchange and had to go over to the OTC bulletin board. It seems to me that investors gave that company a drubbing, after asking some of the hard questions that you wish journalists would pose. On the other hand, the share value of the stock went up between the time that the dividend was announced and the time of the payout, and has not descended to the pre-announcement price or lower yet. “Diluted” or not, the post-payout market value of one’s holdings in this company is higher than the pre-announcement value. Maybe people are speculating with trading cards; maybe they see some longer term legs for the stock at its current share-price.

Its all sounding cushty but what about the UK? We have the highest petrol prices in Europe due to the highest taxation element (of the £0.90/Ltr which is about £4/$8 per gallon 70-80% is tax, otherwise we’d have one of the lowest petrol costs in Europe) . Your sales in the UK would be far more successful than in the USA where petrol is costs far more and travel/commute distances fall well within the range of the roadster EV before we would end up driving into the sea (UK is only something like 1000 miles tall by 250 miles wide!) Lotus are already planning a 200 mile range 4-5 seater hatchback, will Tesla be looking for a piece of that action? I would recommend it cos I live here and unless I buy the G-Wiz like a Londoner theres halibut all decent in terms of electric cars in the Leeds area or even the UK in general. G-Wiz is a glorified golf-kart and thats not the message the UK needs to hear about EVs on the road! We need to see the E-Box, Tesla roadster, Rav4 EV, Phoenix ranger truck, etc! Nothing close is avaialable in over $4/gallon Britain and I cant afford to move to California yet! Help us pleeeeease, the Brits need the Yanks to save them again! Then again check out the electric Mini with a 900+ mile range (200+ all electric) at greencarcongress.com/2006/08/pmls_inwheel_mo.html#comment-27768935, if Teslas dont come out I can only hope one of these does! Competition will speed up everything, dont waste time shipping Lotus chassis to the USA, build in the UK please!

Brilliant points, Darryl. I’ve been following green vehicles, and especially Tesla, like a hawk for some time, eating up every nugget of news that I can get my hands on, and this is the first time I heard anything about Pheonix’s bogus business model. With everything I’ve read from the Tesla blogs, Pheonix’s SUT price point seemed a bit dubious in the light of it’s impressive capability. Now we know why.

In a future blog, I’d love to see a bit of transparency on your own part and give us blog-readers a cost analysis of your beautiful roadster and a glimpse of exactly how Tesla plans on turning a reasonable profit on the second- and third-generation sedans at $50k and $30k price points, respectively. Unless their are some secrets waiting to be revealed, even your state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery technology seems pretty limiting at such competitive price goals. So how are costs cut? Lower range? Lighter weight and smaller size?

Another good post. Thanks Daryl. How’s it going at TED?

The problem is that EVs have been stuck in development hell for so long that most journalists have grown to accept the Big Auto line: “Introducing EVs now isn’t right for our business model, so we don’t want to do it. Ergo, if we don’t do it, no one else can”

Most current EV designs don’t help either. The G-Wiz is a perfect example. No g forces; definitely no whizz..

But you have a great opportunity to publish more videos of your car in action and to wake up these journalists by putting them behind the wheel. EV technology is new and radically different from what they are used to and (as we regular bloggers know) takes time to understand. People will only bother to read the tech stuff if they already know the product rocks.

So start the test drives. Let the car’s performance do the talking. That will make people sit up and notice and bring out the tough questions for you and your competitors.

—-

Editor’s Answer: Dan Neil from the LA Times has reviewed the Tesla Roadster - registration required.

From Joe Bell, Portage IN 3/7/07

Mr. Siry,
My wife and I cannot afford your $80,000 roadster. We are looking to buy a four door PLUG - IN Electric car in the price rage of $15,000 to $20,000. We would like a range of 200 miles from an overnight charge, and a speed up to 60 miles an hours.

Do you think your new car will be in our affordable price range and offer the milage and speed I have listed or what do you expect the cost , range, and speed will be? Any possibility?

Of all the BEV startups coming from California, Tesla Motors has the best marketing. Though we never seen a real Roadster, most people that I talked with have heard of the car. So I think this blog’s concern of image is correct. About Phoenix Motorcars, my thoughts are this is more a battery proof of concept rather than a motor car company.

“our vision … being the leading designer and manufacturer of the most desirable electric vehicles in the world”

This is beautiful, and certainly inspiring to me. However, if I might quibble a bit: you don’t need the word, “leading.” That’s implied by the fact that the EVs you seek to design and manufacture are the MOST desirable in the world. I know that “leading” is one of those vision-statement vocabulary words. But leaving it out would distinguish Tesla from the “by the numbers corporate-speak” crowd, while also making a bolder statement.

If you absolutely must retain “leading,” I might reword the statement as so:

“Our vision: To be the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of compellingly desirable electric vehicles.”

But, in my honest opinion, leaving out “leading” in the original formulation sounds even better than my best shot.

James Anderson Merritt,

No, in fact a stock dividend is functionally equivalent to a stock split. Share prices are reduced proportionally, options contracts are adjusted, and in general the same procedures followed in a stock split are applied to a stock dividend.

This treatment is different from that of a cash dividend. For example, options contracts are unaffected by a cash dividend.

A stock “dividend” is a dividend in name only. No money is being paid out by the issuer. I suspect that it has more to do with our bizarre tax laws than anything else.

I had to study this for the securities exam, which I took only two days ago. Trust me, stock dividends are just as dilutive (in proportion) as are stock splits, and are totally unjustified if the demand for stock is already weak. If the suckers happen to think that stock dividends are good, and drive up the share price as a result, then that’s their problem.

Mastiff: You didn’t say that you PASSED the Securities exam.

Seriously, it appears that I got some bad information, and can only say that I passed it along here sincerely, confident in the original source. I apologize to anyone, whom I might have confused. I understand what goes on with cash dividends and splits; I studied those in accounting class in college, many years ago, and had a lot of practical experience with splits in particular, during a career in high tech in the Silicon Valley. But I learned about stock dividends circa the dot-com boom, through more informal channels, of which I will now be more skeptical. I appreciate you setting me straight on this, and good luck in the securities industry. Promise us that you will use your awesome new government-approved powers only for good.

The fact remains, however, that the stock to which Darryl alluded is higher in market value after the dividend/split than before the “dividend” was announced, yet nowhere near the level of the “high-flying days” of even a year ago. Perhaps the market may be telling us that the stock price was overly inflated then, but relatively solid at its current valuation, especially given that the company is setting up dealerships, signing delivery contracts, and getting into various supply partnerships. That value could remain stable and even increase, if the deliveries are made as promised. I guess we’ll see about that.

I couldn’t agree more. Initially I was disappointed when “that program” seemed to leave any real indications about the real energy efficiencies of things like Hydrogen leaving an overly rosy impression of some technologies, but my jaw hit the floor when they indicated a possible perpetual motion future from compressed air cars. How could something this brain dead slip through?

Media today is weak generally but when it comes to science and technology they tend to suffer from cranial rigor mortis. You may need to overhaul the education system to fix the gaps with science and technology.

# Earl wrote on March 7th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
##
## The reporter was looking to do an article on the affects that the latest change in daylight savings
## times would have on the ability of PV to generate energy.
## He was particularly concerned whether this would affect the viability of EV’s.
## (note, if any readers don’t see what is wrong with this supposition, they really need
## to visit a local planetarium or science educator and get updated on their science understanding)

Don’t laugh too hard… There is a kernel of truth to their concerns.

PG&E sent me a letter saying that their time-of-use meter for my solar system will NOT be re-calibrated to take into account the revised daylight savings scheduled. They let me know that I need to adjust my daily energy usage during the transition period to take into account that the rate schedules will be offset by an hour.

In other words - the daily energy produced by the PV can end up being worth a different amount due to the revised daylight savings. Also, if I recharged my EV at the wrong time of day I could end up paying more for current I take from the grid. So, no, of course the PV array will produce the same energy during the day, but the “worth” of that energy can change because time-of-use schedules give power different prices at different times of day based on the clock in the meter.

It reminds me of the bizzare myths about hybrid cars that too often get spread by the mis-informed media. Don’t be suprised by silly false rumors about the batteries failing after a few years and costing a fortune, or electricity costs too much, or electric cars are not “cost effective”, or lithium will run out, or the electronic emissions cause cancer, or electrical ozone emissions cause health problems, or the batteries will poison everyone, etc.

In the battle between truth and lies, lies spread faster and are often more popular because they are more exciting.

OK, while pure ev’s are definitely the superior form of transport, I’m going to give a little support to the air car. It is actually one of the best alternative “fuels” out there. Superior to hydrogen, possibly even better than biofuels. I get your point on how sketchy the facts are about it, but (with the facts considered) it is not too shabby. Especially given all the other green fuel scams (hydrogen for example) out there.

I just looked through the web site for that N-Motion The Perpetual Motion Vehicle Company that you linked. Trying to raise $200 a pop for membership in their company. A car powered by its own forward momentum, able to cross the entire country on its own inertia without slowing down. (Just how massive are they planning to make the car? And how will it get up to speed in the first place, by fusion power? I wonder what kind of brakes that puppy’s gotta have.)

My god, are they actually getting away with this scam?

Back to Tesla, the thing that immediately excited me about you is that, unlike everyone else in the EV market I’ve seen, you don’t act like a fringe “gee-wiz” R&D company with a cool idea. You’re a car company, just like GM and Toyota are car companies, and your first product is a high performance sports car with a price tag appropriate for its performance class. The only minor difference, worthy of maybe a footnote to your business strategy, is that it just happens to be powered by a pure electric drive train. That gives me hope beyond everything else in you’re doing and where you’ll be leading the automotive industry in the years to come.

When you finally ship your 2007 cars to customers, your 2008 model year is in production, the White Star factory is being built, and people can droll over your cars in the real world, I don’t think you’ll have to weather these shoddy comparisons anymore.

I couldn’t agree with you more Darryl! Haha the media doesn’t even have a clue about the “inevitable” impact of electric transportation, not a foggy idea. When will they finally “GET” it? How long? Tesla Motors once again continues proving first hand that it will “NOT” be throwing in the towel anytime soon or ever if I might add. I’m on YOUR side! Where is my Tesla tee? : D

~Jeffrey~

Congratulations Darryl, you have a great article here. In my opinion the real problem with the media coverage and questions is just another indication of the generally deficient state of science education in this country today. Clearly there was no-one involved in looking over or editing that Future Cars program that knew abything about engineering or physics. I was also seriously disappointed in the entire series, but that segment on “The Fuel” was the worst. They simply lumped battery electric drives in with all the other drivel they were showcasing. The implication of a “perpetual motion” air powered car was simply too much. I have an even better idea. The Tesla Roadster will have regenerative braking that can recharge the batteries when the prakes are applied. We should simply drive the car with one foot on the brake and constantly recharge as we drive forever without plugging in.

Your comments on the Phoenix are illuminating and explain why their vehicle appears to be such a great deal, becasue they are losing their shorts on each one. As you pointed out, Tesla is the only company I have currently seen on the web that looks like it has a real workable business model, a plan to bring large scale EV produciton to reality, and the engineering ability to make it happen. If you hire GM’s best EV talent now you could cut your largest potential competitors legs out from under them. That said I am on the waiting list for a Phoenix and if GM offered the Volt today without the engine and with a longer range, say 100 miles, for $40K or less I would probably buy that.

On the subject of markets, I believe you will suceed as a company, I also see us on the cusp of a personal transportation revolution (real EV’s for all) and I am certain that if you survive, which I believe you will, i will someday have at least one Tesla. Furthermore I see an auto industry 20 to 30 years from now where ICE’s are completely obsolete and Tesla is the new GM of the 1950’s, dominant. Perhaps it is now time for GM Chrysler and Ford to go under and make way for real innovation and quality products (it will take some time for them to disappear).

I think that if things go as I expect, I have purchased my last new gas powered car for the rest of my life. I will replace my Prius with an electric and never go back. Electric is here to stay this time. Keep up the good work and do not let anyone buy you out. Tesla will be a multi-billion or trillion dollar company within 10 years and anyone with a piece of the company now that hangs onto it can buy their own country then.

I agree with everything written above–I just can’t believe that it was written, can’t see the media taking it well, if they actually read the blog.

Keep up the great work.

Fusion: America’s real energy independence

America’s true independence from fossil-fuels, imported and domestic, resides in exothermic nuclear fusion, the awesome process that powers the sun and all stars in the universe.

In terms of power yield, compared to fusion all other sources of energy are mere morsel, except for inherently risky fission.

Opposite to fission, fusion is zero-emissions except for inert helium, impervious to meltdowns (e.g., Three Mile Island, Chernobyl), produces no radioactive leaks (except for slightly radioactive tritium) if the reactor chamber or the containment vessel break (attacks, sabotage, earthquakes), and yields no wastes difficult to dispose of, or usable to make nuclear weapons.

Fusion would satiate energy-hungry America’s continually increasing consumption to sustain her overall vitality and might. Total consumption in 2005, the latest year for which the DOE’s Energy Information Agency offers the most comprehensive set of data, was 99,890,000,000,000,000 Btu. Fusion could cleanly and safely supply most of that.

Of such a gargantuan number, 32.01% went to industry; 28%, to transportation; 21.89%, to residences; and 17.98%, to commerce.

Fusion could, cleanly and safely, produce alone vast amounts of electricity to satisfy all that demand.

The only exception would be air transportation, which would keep burning petroleum derivatives, i.e., aviation gasoline and jet fuel. However, with fusion, all ground human and goods transportation could go electric.

Currently, 70.28% of all electricity consumed in America comes from fossil fuels, 20.45%, from nuclear fission, and 9.27%, from renewables. Fusion could cleanly and safely produce alone all that electricity many times.

Why then doesn’t America go for fusion decidedly?

There is the plausible argument that fossil-fuel and green-energy vested-interests oppose fusion strongly, and lobby heavily to keep fusion R&D languishing in a sea of scientific and administrative careerism and bloated bureaucracy.

For a token, America is doing now most of her fusion R&D through the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project . . . after quietly, almost furtively, abandoning in 2004 her own program, the Fusion Ignition Research Experiment.

ITER is controlled to a high degree by the anti-American, corrupt and bureaucratic United Nations Organization through the similarly flawed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA is the ineffective nuclear proliferation “watchdog” that has allowed none else than Iran as the next nuclear power in the pipeline.

To make things worse, Russia is one of ITER’s most influential members.

Russia has vast proved fossil-fuel deposits (74.4 billion barrels of petroleum, 47.6 trillion cubic meters of dry natural gas, and 3 trillion tons of coal) that support about 60% of her exports, which allowed her to accrue about $500 billion in foreign reserves in 2006.

Fusion isn’t something Russia craves; she’ll easily make ITER creep: Russia inherited the Soviet Union’s book of dilatory trickery.

ITER plans to complete an experimental fusion reactor probably in 2016 (past 2050 experts say) and a demonstration fusion electric plant . . . 20 years later.

America can’t wait that long; America must independently, at full strength, develop and deploy commercial grade fusion reactors in 5-10 years at most, and, during the transition, utilize whatever source of energy is available.

It will be very expensive, probably costlier than the Manhattan, Polaris, and the Moon Travel programs together.

However, the mere announcement that America will go decidedly after fusion will make foreign fossil-fuel exporters overproduce trying to sell before it’s too late, thus driving prices down and making America’s transition to fusion and true energy independence less burdensome.

And, as a bonus, once America gets commercial fusion power plants running all over like 7Elevens, fossil-fuel prices will plummet worldwide, changing the geopolitical landscape positively: The Iranians will lose their main source of revenues to export terrorism and develop nuclear weapons. Wahhabi Saudi Arabia will lose all leverage it currently has on us. The Russians will soften or even abandon their neo-imperialistic ambitions. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez won’t have anything to blackmail us with. Canada and Mexico will treat us less contemptuously.

Furthermore, developing nations could then go nuclear, fusion of course, without being tempted to develop nukes.

It would be America’s complete cornucopia, with true energy independence as the most precious jewel in it.

America should with all her prowess develop and deploy commercial fusion reactors across the nation in 5-10 years at most to safely and cleanly produce vast amounts of inexpensive electricity, thus becoming truly energy independent.

You’ll conquer the automobile market only and only if you come out with an electric Model T. Othewise you’ll end up selling dope as sorry De Lorean.

by the way. I have seen easy dismissals of fast-charge capability on this blog. Ok, if you dont believe Phoenix, a small startup, take a look at recent news on Subaru/TEPCO R1E city car.
They claim 15-minute charge capability for 50 miles of range for this city car, and 30 prototypes are reportedly in testing. 30 prototypes on roads is a bit further along than Tesla is currently.
Lithium battery is claimed to last for more than 100 000 miles.
There are also speculations of importing the production version to London.
Fast-charge tech is definitely coming for EVs, so make sure that while having a solid, currently doable technology in hand, you dont fall behind the technology curve with the next models.

Darryl’s blog lays to rest many questions that I, as a lay consumer, had regarding other GreenTech automotive technologies. I never considered these other automotive technologies competitors to Tesla, since the auto industry offers so much room to expand into for everyone, however it is very helpful to better understand why the MDI Aircar and Phoenix Motors aren’t on the same level.

Are there any other GreenTech transportation technologies out there that Tesla thinks highly of? Companies that are part of the solution, perhaps on a different scale, or in a different market, than Tesla?

Dear Mr. Siry,

I agree with what you have written, but I offer one area that I have not seen Tesla Motors address, and that is battery cost. I have been unable to find any infiormation whatsoever that reveals how your company (or any other) expects battery costs to come down over time. Why are Li-ion batteries currently so expensive? Is a breakthrough required to drive down cost, or is merely a matter of economies of scale? Is Lithium production really a possible constraint in the next few years, or do you see adequate capacity coming online to address the expanded market. Lots of questions - no answers. I firmly believe in the future of EV’s provided battery costs come down and energy density continues to increase. Give us some information about how you see that happening. I’d like to see a white paper similar on battery technology similar to the one that was written about The 21st Century Electric Car.

—-

Editor’s Answer: Take a look at the battery white paper. 

Here in the UK the media are very bad at all scientific subjects. See badscience.net/

I’m not questioning the veracity of your statements at all, because I don’t have a clue, but could you quote the price of the Altairnano batteries?

The original contract between Altair and Phoenix had 10 packs at $750,000, that’s more than the car costs, but I’d love to see what the packs cost once production is established. If you know that’d clear up a big piece of the false media reporting.

I don’t know if I could go out and buy a pack from them, but it seems to me that going by a number that is pretty clearly prototype based, and using it as a cost basis is almost exactly what you’re preaching against. It’s roughly parallel to saying the Tesla costs as much as the existing prototypes that you’ve had driving around.

kert wrote on March 8th, 2007 at 4:37 am

by the way. I have seen easy dismissals of fast-charge capability on this blog. Ok, if you dont believe Phoenix, a small startup, take a look at recent news on Subaru/TEPCO R1E city car.
They claim 15-minute charge capability for 50 miles of range for this city car, and 30 prototypes are reportedly in testing.
=================================================================

15 minutes for 50 miles of additional autonomy seems about at the outside of charge capability for the current infrastructure. You’re doing well if you can get 1 additional mile per minute. This mechanism allegedly gives you a little over 3 miles per minute. If you figure that you can drive around 5 miles per kWh, then the fast-charge station would need to deliver 10 kWh in 15 minutes (at a rate no less than 40 kWh per hour, which would imply a current of 40000(kW)/220(V)=180A — commensurately less current if higher voltages were used, however). By way of comparison, this rate of charge would “fill up” the Tesla ESS somewhere between 70 and 90 minutes. That’s fast, but not blazingly fast.

The hookup necessary for even this recharge rate is probably beyond the capacity of most domestic and small-business hookups in Japan (or the US, for that matter), hence the need to pepper the region with fast-charge stations. It’s a doable thing, but even 15 minutes for 50 miles pales in comparison with gasoline fill-up, which can give you 300 miles or more in just five minutes.

Fast-charge is limited by the physics of electricity, and by the chemistry of batteries. In terms of the latter, fast-charging can reduce battery life; if Subaru has acquired a battery that yields the impressive 10 year lifespan cited in articles aboout the city car, even though being fast-charged exclusively, that is DOUBLY impressive. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

I found very interesting from my point of view engineering solution to improve energy efficiensy of standard ICE engine.

www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060227/FREE/302270007/1023/THISWEEKSISSUE

The idea is to add two cycles to normal 4 cycles of ICE and make 6 cycles. 4th cycle in such case recompresses what is typically exaust gas and injects water at the top compression. As a result water evaporates and push piston one more time. After that normal exaust happen. As a result cooling system of typical ICE engine could be removed completely because all that wasted heat it removes would now do useful work via making a steam during extra cycles. Also efficiensy would increase from 30% to 50% for ICE and I believe that for diesel ICE efficiensy could be managed to 60%. Apparently cost of this engine would be comparable with ICE and as a result electric vehicles would have significantly harder challenge to replace cars based on gasoline or diesel fuel. Prius style hybrid with such an engine would be able to manage 100 mpg city / 80 mpg highway efficiensy coming close to 110 mpg equivalent in city traffic of Tesla Roadster. But such a hybrid would have cost comparable to Prius instead of being higher than $ 50 K per car price of Tesla Motors cars announced so far.
At last very interesting competition in car industry starts heating up between different technologies. I guess it will take 5 - 10 years before such improved ICE would come into car manucaturing mainstream but similar timing is valid for mass market BEV cars also. At that point I think one way or another cars would become 2 - 3 times more energy efficient than today - pretty nice.

Thnk you Darryl Siry for putting Tesla’s mission in the automotive industry in clearer perspective. I continue to be enthusiastic about the prospects for the on road products that you envision. However, it seems to me that two things in the near term will enhance Tesla’s reputation as a serious provider of advanced automotive products:
Firstly, having numbers of flashy Roadsters tooling around the Bay Area being driven by real people (celebrity or not) putting the vehicles to hard on-road beta testing with all their personnal driving technique variables; and,
Seconly, soon having reliable data, describing the appearance and attributes of the much expected White Star, being made available to us prospective customers, the largely incompetent media, and the chattering masses. I would hope that your White Star launch might occur in the 2nd or, at least, 3rd quarter 2007.
I see the White Star, in its various genres being much closer to us ordinary folks who seriously want out of the petroleum fog and seek the true car of the future.
Tod G. Collins, Orcas Island

Rene Guerra: Watch this video “solar airship” www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VBTKEPAzvA&mode=related&search=

For all of their promise, I have seen only a few electrics on the road — and I live in Los Angeles, where most any kind of other exotic comes across my path from time to time. I don’t think it’s much wonder the press lumps Tesla in with other “gee whiz” technology, because that’s about what I’d be saying if I saw a Tesla – or RAV4 EV or Honda FCX – motoring down the road.

The press will “get it” eventually, but I don’t know that I’d be blaming them now for failing to ask the right questions. Instead, I’d be persistent and dogged about getting the message out – and, come to speak of it, getting the car out too. There’s nothing that sells cars quite like having a car in a showroom available to sell.

Darryl’s biggest challenge, I think, will not be convincing reporters. It will be, instead, convincing buyers, despite the hundred years of tradition and faith they have in the internal combustion engine. While walking around the L.A. car show in December, I found myself reassured – on a non-intellectual level – by words like “bi-turbo” and “variable valves” and the like. Somehow they seem more real than “kilowatt hours” and “AC induction.” I had to keep reminding myself of that four-second sprint to sixty miles per hour.

In the end, Tesla will probably sell cars the way cars have always been sold: on styling, performance, reliability, and utility. If Tesla delivers on its Roadster and Whitestar promises, I think it will have scored on all these points. And if they do, then Darryl will get his wish: Tesla will be compared to GM, Ford, Toyota, and Nissan.

Here’s hoping!

Anatoly: Interesting article on the Crower cycle engine. Thanks for posting the link.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what would happen if the engine were adapted to burn hydrogen and the exhaust water were collected and fed back into the engine to facilitate the steam cycle.

To James Anderson Merritt:

1. Problem with hydrogen is low cost storage in the car at practical density level. Until this problem is solved hydrogen fuel is a pipe dream.

2. I could estimate amount of water needed for Crower cycle engine as 50% to 75% of mass of air + fuel mixture. Burning hydrogen in the air would produce less than 25% of air + fuel mass as water vapor. As a result it is not enough water to take directly from fuel burn exaust if no water recycling is applied.

3. Gasoline fuel would make up I guess 15 % to 25 % of air + fuel mixture. So if you just lose water to the air the engine would require 2 to 3 times larger mass of water than fuel. But I believe that 60% to 80% of water could be recycled via condenser. This would also be more efficient. As a result I would think the engine would requre about 60% of gasoline for the same mechanical energy produced versus usual ICE. But saved 40% of fuel mass would be replaced by water. So Crower engine would use approximately same amount of fuel liquids as normal engine but only 60% of this would be gasoline and 40% would be water I guess.

4. Technical water is much less expensive compared to gasoline so overall we get fuel cost saving. Amount of CO2 pollution would be also at least 40% less.

5. Crower cycle is actually similar by physics involved to most efficient electricity generation combined cycle of gas turbine followed by steam turbine. So Crower cycle gasoline engine in a Prius style hybrid would match advertised Tesla Roadster miles per gallon efficiensy if electricity is generated with fossil fuel. Whole twice efficiensy factor of Tesla Roadster versus Prius comes mainly from 50% - 60% fossil fuel electricity generators versus 25% - 30% efficiensy of ICE. Crower cycle bridges this gap almost completely by having about 50% efficiensy. It basically uses same physics of energy use to these advanced electricity generators but by means of original engine technology.

6. Tesla Roadster or Whitestar would still have some efficiensy edge if used with solar or wind generated electricity. This corresponds to infinite miles per gallon because no fossil fuel is used in this case.

Has Tesla Motors thought about entering the roadster in Motorsports? It technically should be a great competitor for the current drift racing. As the winter testing video clips exhibited the car can drift very well when pushed to its limits. The benefits from racing could be reaching a new market along with improved development of the drive system and handling.

My suspicion is that Tesla Motors perpetuates the poor (and oddball) media coverage. There is heavy emphasis on the roadster as a new kind of *electric car* with less emphasis on it out performing all other roadsters at four times its price point. The strategy worked well to get the first crop of roadsters sold to wealthy car enthusiasts who want to “go green”, but perhaps it’s time to move on. Get Motor Trend to put the car head to head with the Jaguar XK. Promote the WhiteStar as comparable to the BMW 7 Series, but American made and half the price.

Being environmentally sound while decreasing the global addiction to petroleum is an admirable goal and should always remain Tesla Motor’s vision. But as a marketing executive you know that you must identify the market and sell to them. Market performance, safety, reliability and comfort at a reasonable price compared to other cars in the same class. The media will come around.

Dear Darryl,
Thank you for this valuable blog entry. Articles like that shows us briefly some ignorance (professional?) to the object that is under writing. At present the Geneve International Motor Show is going on. There are a lot of greenwashing in the press, hypes hybrid, bashes hybrid, etcetcetc…. A lot of confusion to the public! Also the discussion in the political industry about the avoidance of CO2 is getting hot and hotter. The German Kanzler (female chancellor) Mrs. Merkel first protected theirs car industry from reducing CO2 waste, afther that she squeezed out in the EU the high-flying objective of reducing the CO2 output of 20%. She is betting on renewable energy like Mr. Chirac does. In his mind renewable energy is atomic [sic!].
Which is the right trail into the future? I think it is the localized energy production, CO2 neutral, solar supported, without greenwashing, like this nice exapmle from Austria www.gussing.at. And, of course, Tesla Roadsters and WhiteStars all over the roads!
Keep on going!
Patrik

just read a brief hard hitting review of the Tesla Roadster and battery electric cars in general at The register website.

www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/08/tesla_car_examined/

The reporter did a comparison of the Roadster with a Porsche 911 Carrera S. He concludes that the Porsche 911 goes further on a tank of fuel and can be refilled in minutes.

He sums up the article by stating the following :-

“If we’re worried about global warming or Western dependence on foreign resources, we need a big majority of road vehicles to move away from fossil fuel, not just some classes of them for some jobs. This means that hydrogen, biofuels, or some other sort of kit will have its place, probably alongside or hybridised with electric vehicles or – just perhaps – largely bypassing them”.

Anyone care to comment on his deductions / conclusions?

Darryl:

I agree the press can be lazy and it is frustrating to deal with them. Welcome to the wonderful world of automobile marketing. If you want Telsa to be taken seriously as an OEM then you need to have a OEM style marketing campaign. Where’s the Tesla display on the autoshow circuit? (Detroit, Geneva, Tokyo, SEMA at a minimum) Where are the Tesla executives at the industry functions? Where are the interviews and articles in the industry press? Where’s the motorsports support? Etc. You guys are doing a good job with the blogs and some of the mainstream media, but if you want to join the industry get on WJR or Autoline Detroit, in Automotive News, publish SAE papers. These are the things that will get you credibility in the industry media which will then trickle down to the mainstream media. If you want to be treated like a major OEM then you need to act like one.

Anatoly: Yes, I expected that the water output of a “hydrogen Crower engine” wouldn’t be enough to support the water needs of the engine by itself; my interest was more in terms of seeing whether an internal combustion engine could have no exhaust at all, not even water vapor. That only seems possible if the nominal “exhaust” output is also a valid “fuel” input to the engine, hence my thought about hydrogen.

I realize that the “hydrogen highway,” if it is ever built, is a long way away, so I asked my question more in a pure research vein. This kind of thing might make a good science fair display.

# Anatoly Moskalev wrote on March 7th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
## This energy density would be ~0.1 MJ / kg or ~0.05 MJ / liter for cold compressed air versus
## ~0.7 MJ / kg or larger than ~1 MJ / liter for Li-ion batteries.
## From these numbers it is clear that range of hypothetical compressed air car would be
## just a few miles so it will never be practical.

Is that the maximum compression you could do with compressed air? Has it been compressed to a liquid state? Can the liquid be further compressed? I would guess that the limiting factor is the strength of the storage tanks. Would it be possible for compressed air to be more viable (as a vehicle energy storage medium) if stronger tanks were invented? e.g.: something like carbon nano-fiber tanks with a titanium liner?
I know we are counting on battery technology to improve, but is there also a possibility of compressed air to improve as well?

On another note, I was pondering how much the electrons add to the weight in a fully charged 50kWh battery pack compared to one that is empty. Is this even measurable? I assume the weight is incidental, but it is remarkable how efficient electricity is in terms of (nearly) no weight per charge compared to various liquids we use to fuel vehicles.

You will make serious inroads into the car market until you come out with a “T Model”, otherwise you may end up, like poor DeLorean, selling dope.

A Startech plasma reactor could substantialy reduce the cost of batteries by allowing effecient recovery of key materials to their pure state. This should significantly lower the cost of future high tech batteries. Technological advances as well as Chinese manufacturing cost (Advanced Battery Technologies). just look at flash memory, it has dropped by a factor of a hundred to one in just ten years. I expect the same will be true with Altair batteries. Altair will probably do to their batteries what Sandisk did to flash memory. I invested in Sandisk in the early days and am invested in Altair and Startech now. These are still speculative investments as with any bleeding edge technology and I don’t recommend them except for high risk money.

“Now i have always had an inventive mind and have been thinking of a new system in which if it was added to the telsa could increase its Overall milage per charge posibly up to 25% or more and think it is well worth taking a look at designing and implementing into the telsa. By using the exsisting engine to power an alternator via gears or pullys and belts and using the electricity produced to constantly recharge the batter while in motion.” -Jason

Jason,

You are one dumb halibut. When the engine drives that alternator and produces electricity, where do you think that energy came from? Magic? It came from the batteries, and insofar as all alternators are less than 100% efficient, you’ll always get less back out than the extra you put into the engine to drive the alternator. Same goes for wind turbines and all the rest of the ridiculous perpetual-motion ideas floating around.

One fairly frequent argument against electrics as environmentally friendly is that they simply transfer pollution upstream to the presumably dirty generator. The implication is that gasoline is not such a bad alternative after all.

I’ve read a number of counter-arguments, but I have a question about one: how much electricty does it take to refine a gallon of gasoline? Would that be enough electricity to power a Tesla, say, 20 miles, the mileage my car might go on that gallon? Does gasoline have large upstream and downstream pollution characteristics?

Hmmm. Several (many) people have commented on the impracticality of quick recharging of BEV batteries. Profferred calculations usually end up in megawatts which nobody is going to get out of their house wiring. So, it occurred to me that one could have (at some expense, mind you) an energy storage and delivery unit which would accumulate solar & grid & etc. sources and be on call to dump a few hundred megajoules in a few minutes. The main limit would be the cable it seems.

Speaking of being skeptical, I still haven’t seen a Tesla Roadster roll under its own power with my own eyes, much less had a chance to ride in or drive one. (I have examined and touched not one, but TWO prototypes, however.)

Here in Santa Cruz, we have a new cab company; its small “fleet” consists diesel automobiles that run exclusively on biodiesel. The idea is not just to get people from A to B, but to allow them to “go green” in their transportation choices, as well as to educate them about the reality of using biodiesel as a fuel. So far, the new company seems fairly popular.

The Roadster wouldn’t seem to have the makings of a good cab (maybe the Whitestar will, someday), but it would be a hell of rental car. I am hoping that some Roadster production will be reserved for rental usage, and that some of us who can’t yet pony up the full purchase price will nevertheless be able to drive the car a few years sooner, via the rental mechanism.

> But the apparatus to do it will be expensive, and probably unwieldy (or even dangerous_, as well

There is a reason that high current / high Voltage switches are not simple knife switches. If you were in the vicinity of a switch like that you would be electricuted to a crisp. Power Plants have remote powered switches so that you don’t have to be near them. As a generality Voltage doesn’t kill, Current does. 10,000 volts of static electricity is nothing, but a car battery with only 12V has enough current to put you away.

BTW ( slightly off topic ) Do you know why the lights flicker a few times before going out? To allow small animals to fall free of the lines. When they reach across the lines they can’t let go. So if a tree or telephone poles hasn’t fallen they drive around looking for smoking squirrels. As described by my Circuits II teacher back in college

I have tried to get an accurate price of Altair Nano’s batteries but the best I have found is a press release from Phoenix Motors “the company announced it has entered into a multi-year purchase and supply agreement with Phoenix under which Phoenix has projected orders for 2007 between $16 and $42 Million for up to five hundred battery pack systems.”
This is from www.phoenixmotorcars.com/news/2007/pr_010907.html To me this tells me two things, one that the price of a 35kwhr battery pack is $42M/500 = $84k and that this is for production quantities. Phoenix also has an exclusive marketing agreement with Altair, so this is a wholesale price. Rich, where did you get the $9500 figure from?
By the way Altair got 16% of Phoenix in that deal, no small amount.

To TEG:

1. No extra electrons are added in fully charged battery versus empty battery. The same electrons move from one electrode to another exactly - none missing. So no extra weight is added to the battery by charging - certain mass is just moved between electrodes from the state of lower energy to the state of higher energy - that is all. Actually major moved mass consists of Li ions ( approximately 11300 times bigger than mass of moved electrons ). Mass of Li ions moved for 52 kWh full charge of battery pack of Tesla Roadster (inside all 6831 batteries) would be approximately 3.25 kg ( 7.15 pounds ). As you could see corresponding mass of moved electrons would be just about 0.3 g.

2. If you would search for a record regardless of cost so you would need carbon fiber composite tank. In such a case theoretical limit from the best carbon fibers tensile strength of 6.3 GPa I have seen and density of fibers themselves of 1.7 kg / liter provides ability to hold air pressure about 1200 to 1500 bar ( 1200 to 1500 times atmospheric pressure ). At that pressure approximately air would be compressed to a liquid state under typical summer ambient temperature. Higher pressure would not store more energy because it would rise very fast without volume change. 1500 bar = 0.15 GPa so at the top limit of tensile strength you could have 2.5 mm wall thickness per 20 sm diameter of a cilindrical storage. In actual composite material and taking into account sfety margin you would get ~20 times thicker wall. So we are talking about a cylinder with external diameter of 25 sm and internal diameter of air storage cavity 15 sm. Density of the compressed air would be ~2 kg / liter similar to density of the tank material. But only 1/3 of volume of the tank would be filled with air. As a result average density would be ~0.7 kg / liter of air per volume of storage system.

It may sirprise you but stored energy per unit of compressed air mass DOES not change with pressure increase after it passes approximately 100 bar. The reason is that this energy density is determined by the temperature of a gas and does not depend on pressure as long as this pressure is many times higher than pressure of atmospheric air.

The energy per unit of air mass would be at 27 C approximately 8.31 x 300 / 29 J / g => 86 kJ / kg = 0.086 MJ / kg. Taking into account indicated efficient volume including storage system we get 0.055 MJ / liter.

I did not actually include properly the mass of the tank into data presented earlier. With that mass energy density becomes ~0.03 MJ / kg = ~30 kJ / kg. You should also understand that this is theoretical limit. Practical energy would be say ~10 kJ / kg or may be ~20 kJ / kg. For comparison Li-ion battery pack of Tesla Roadster has ~400 kJ / kg energy density and it still takes 35% mass of the loaded car.

As you can see absolutely ultimate energy density of compressed air per unti of mass just matches energy density of today’s ultracapacitors. So compressed air car is absolutely ruled out by energy density considerations even before any engineering aspects.

Five hundred units is just a prototype run, imangine how much the first wafer of ic’s cost?
These units are being made in a test facility. Cost will only really start to come down when the batteries are being made by the millions for a wide variety of uses. when produc tion hits large quantaties the cost drop will be dramatic just like in any high tech endeaver. Look at how much any prototype or short production run has cost in the past. Even amortizing cost over a few hundred thousand units pushes cost through the roof. Tesla will have the same economics on it’s side, as the unit volumne gets to the hundreds of thousands research and facility cost per unit will drop like a rock. Also just as with anything else this will extend to everything, labor skill set, suppliers, production equipment and the infastructure to charge and service the vehicles. The learning curve for lowering cost will be dramatic, just look at the cost of any high tech item in the last thirty years. Silicon Valley has a diferent mind set the government labs or Detroit, it has a unique mix of large amounts of VC financing of what others consider dreams, people that convert dreams to reality and the infastructure and culture to support them. Once a prototype is made the connections world wide to make the best product at the lowest cost anywhere in the world are also here and have been in place for years.

We are just at the tip of many revolutionary changes in energy and transport of which Silicon Valley will be one of the leaders, if not the leader. The technology will be put together here and manufactured someplace else. The most exciting times in energy and transport are ahead. The next five years will be like a good read of a science fiction novel, enjoy the ride. Oil is a dirty fuel that needs to be displaced, but the oil companies will not go down without a fight, what organization or organism wants to die? They will fight to stay alive no matter what the cost to us all. Just look at their support of this truely evil adminsistration and this oil war which finances terrorism arount the world. The true cost of gas when you add defence, environmental, and social cost is in excess of seven dollars a gallon. For the cost of this war we could have developed clean alternative energy available at reasonable cost evenly distributed throughout the world from many sources. This would have created a high value export industry with millions of good jobs with great benefit to mankind and the planet. It will still happen despite this administration, just much slower and we may loose the lead to other countries. I hope the US doesn’t end up being a follower and not a leader. It’s sad the oil companies bought the White House and made war the first choice of this once great nation. Violence and war represent the last refruge of the incompent. Tesla, Altair and many others represent this countries best side, to bad we showed the world our worst side.

# Brent asked
# How much electricty does it take to refine a gallon of gasoline?

According to a post from Richard in the Energy blog from two weeks ago, it takes about 12 kWh of energy to refine one (US?) gallon of gas. Assuming this energy is in electrical form then a Roadster could use it to travel about 60 miles at about 50 mph.

I haven’t been able to track down any figures confirming this value.

I suggest Tesla Motors to rethink their mentioning of global warming in their promotion of EVs.

Global warming is becoming a huge wholly political campaign against developement.
A must see: The Great Global Warming Swindle
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle

Sorry about my spelling and grammer, I’ve been doing back to back seventy hour weeks for to long. I marvel at how the internet is changing all the rules even for someone who considers themselves barely computer literate. I think most here are underestimating how fast the net has made the game. Mankind has a knowlege and research engine a thousand times more powerful than just twenty years ago. Powerful computers, fast world wide communications, millions of educated and self trained people world wide, fast fluid world wide financial markets, search engines, blogs, etc, all these add up to a pace of change once beyond our imagination. Jules Verne would have loved to see these times. Telsa is a rule changing company not just in their product but in how they conduct business. I look forward to seeing the many changes and advances in business practices and products that Tesla and others will be making. When good men do nothing, evil flourishes. The people at Tesla are doing something. Congradulations for your vision and hard work.

PS This blog is part of my required reading, I consider a beakon of light in these dangerous times.

To Arthur W. Hanosn:

1. Thank you for mentioning Laremo cars. Loremo LS could manage 157 mpg at a price 11000 euro ( $15 K ballpark ) and is a 4 seater. The only weakness is 20 sec 0 to 100 km/h acceleration. I would think that by adding couple electric motors/generators to not driving wheels and reasonable size battery of ultracapacitors under $5 K cost total this car could be managed to accelerations at 6-8 sec 0 to 100 km/h level and it would grow mpg efficiensy to 180-200 mpg. Electric motors and ultracaps would easily more than double peak power for moderate (100 - 200 kg) extra weight making up fast acceleration and adding regenerative braking. Somebody will do that. But even without this it is a great car.

2. I know about plasma reactor you mentioned and similar kinds. It is a great technology to handle trash and produce enrgy from it - kind of technology revolution coming with the way how cities would manage trash. It surely would help to reduce cost of batteries recycling. It is also could produce electrical energy and hydrogen fuel from trash.

Richard-

The problem with electical “gas-stations” is not as easy as simply providing the technical ability to charge rapidly. The bigger problem is that even if we could make a charging station that fit the bill, they would suffer from a lack of demand. We’ve already established that EVs will work for 95% of situations or more…so almost everybody would be charging at home. The business case for building a gas station would be pretty weak if it depended on “road-trips” for all its sales.

I would expect the success of charging stations to depend on them being very small (down to 1-car), cheap, and automated in addition to quick. It may be the utility companies who are best positioned to do something like this…they have easier access to easements and such than most firms, and the natural ability to alter the transmission grid for their own purposes. On the other hand, the gas retailers have a good starting point, since the revolution won’t come all at once, so to speak…for years, there will probably be a few electrics and yet plenty of gas vehicles to keep the stations running, so they could easily tack one or two charging bays onto each station…the trouble is that as EVs take over, the gas sales that were providing most of the revenue would dry up and the remaining charging business wouldn’t be nearly enough. They would be forced to find another revenue stream or dramatically cut costs…probably by shrinking the system to a very small automated operation.

Anyway, as for the technical aspects of the fast-charging battery, they are certainly being worked on. But not by Tesla, per se; their technology is not dependent on any particular battery chemistry. Lots of the new batteries said to be just over the horizon claim fast charging ability, and the current electrical grid can provide plenty of juice in many places. So, yeah, when these fancy-dancy new batteries come out and are cost-effective, I’d expect to see them in Tesla’s vehicles (assuming, of course, that their energy density was up to snuff). But I’d also expect the charging-station situation to take a lot longer to work out, even after all the technical hurdles were overcome.

Darryl Siry’s comments about the intellectural laziness and lack of vision in the mainstream press are completely accurate. However, if he were in charge of my company ’s public relations I’m not sure he would still have his job after giving vent to his frustrations in public.

The job of a PR department is to create a positive image for its product, and like it or not the press must be enlisted as allies in this effort. You don’t recruit allies by pointing out their inadequacies in public.

On the topic of public perception, it’s entirely understandable that the public may view the Tesla Roadster as an expensive toy for Hollywood types with a green guilt problem. The choice of a high performance open roadster, using celebrity buzz to create public awareness, etc. were brilliant start-up marketing ploys, but Tesla must move beyond them to the next level of acceptance.

Several commentators have said that if Tesla wants to be taken seriously as a competitor for the big boys it must play the big boy’s games— auto shows, road tests by enthuasists magizines, etc. rather than merely stimulating the sensationalist press. One of the things the big boys do is use motor sports participation to place themselves in the public eye.

If I were in charge of the second stage promotion for Tesla one of the things I would seriously look at is buying the right to be the pace car for the Champ Car World Series. This racing series is in a strong growth mode, with increasing TV and press coverage and attendance figures of 60,000-80,000 per race. As a pace car leading a field of 800hp turbocharged race cars, the Tesla would gain instant credibiliy, and the automotive press would fight to test it. Motor sports is big business– it has made F1 owner Bernie Ecelstone one of the richest men in the world, and Champ Car is positioning itself to be second only to F1 in worldwide popularity.

RDE

Re: “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

A must-read: “The Great Channel Four Swindle”

climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/

It seems that better places for charging stations would be chain store and shopping mall parking lots. The stores can afford these more easily than dedicated stations. It would attract the certain type of customers, and an EV owner will have something to do, while her car is charging (with a caveat that the store is not interested in a very fast charge ).
Also, with some popularity of EVs, peer-to-peer charging may be possible. Post your house location on a common web site, use that site to plan your route, make some money off your expensive energy system, when not in use for your own vehicle.
Ultimately, though, automatic “electricity vending machines” would probably be the best.

#Dean wrote on March 10th, 2007 at 10:57 am

#I suggest Tesla Motors to rethink their mentioning of global warming in their promotion of EVs.
#Global warming is becoming a huge wholly political campaign against developement.
#A must see: The Great Global Warming Swindle

This film is a nice piece of propaganda which many people will approve, since they don’t want to take the responsibility for global warming. For a discussion of the fallacies and swindles of the film have a look at the science forum of Channel 4

# Anatoly Moskalev wrote on March 10th, 2007 at 12:22 am
## To TEG:
## 1. No extra electrons are added in fully charged battery versus empty battery.

Hmm, OK. I guess I misunderstood something basic in how electricity works.
Don’t some electronic devices (such as CRT monitors for instance) emit electrons? Where do those “extra” electrons come from if you aren’t feeding new electrons into the system? Does some material slowly concert to a different material as it throws off its’ electrons?

I know many systems just send the electrons through a load and they come back to the other side resulting in electrons in a different energy state (but still there), but I assumed that some amount of electrons would be lost somewhere in the process. Doesn’t a high voltage system create some amount of “static” electricity that can discharge electrons into the environment?

When lightening strikes a lightening rod doesn’t it transfer electrons into the rod?

—

## So compressed air car is absolutely ruled out by energy density considerations even before any engineering aspects.

Thanks for taking the time to try to spell out the details. I didn’t completely follow what you said, but I can see that you have considered the ideal case for compressed air and find that it is limited compared to alternate approaches.

=====================

# Dreamlander wrote on March 11th, 2007 at 6:18 am
## It seems that better places for charging stations would be chain store and shopping mall parking lots.

They have these in California. I recharge my RangerEV at “Fry’s” and “Costco” while shopping there.
They got some tax breaks for putting in the chargers. The big problem is keeping non-EVs (ICE vehicles) from parking in the charging spots.

## an EV owner will have something to do, while {their} car is charging (with a caveat that the store is not interested in a very fast charge ).

Yeah - I tend to do a little extra shopping as I wait for a bit more charge while there…

## Post your house location on a common web site, use that site to plan your route

Such a thing already exists. You have to be willing to give to receive:
home.att.net/~evchargernews/

Why did you go with the single Electric motor option? Why not use four electric motors one for each wheel? Technology for these types of motors have allowed them to become smaller and more powerful. Thinking in terms of performance this wouldgreatly increase performance numbers considering the balance of the vehicle is evenly spit. Several companies has made super lightweight electric motors that have ABS, Regenerative Braking, and more built directly into the motor itself.

I am in the development stage of a Full Electric Vehicle. As of this time full details can not be released but expect horsepower numbers in the high 400’s with 100% torque available to all four wheels. 0-60 will be in the high 3’s with a max speed of 140MPH. As of this time the actual vehicle itself is in the design process, but expect either a full or partial Carbon fiber body.

[Contact details deleted]

—-

Editor’s Answer: Take a moment to read the blog articles, white papers and other info on this site. You may find the Balance blog a good place to start.

To TEG:

1. CRT emits electrons OK. But exactly same number of electrons as emitted arrive through wire to replace what was emitted. It also exist a conductive layer on the screen so emitted electrons on arrival move along the screen surface into some a wire. Now that wire is connected to ~25 kV power supply. So electrons pass through this suppy to the other end connected to ground wire. Electron gun emitting electrons in a first place to CRT screen is also connected to ground wire. So it pums all electrons it needs to emit from that ground wire through some electronic components.
Bottom line is that EVERY electrical system in practice just moves almost all of its electrons used during operation in perfect balance so that no electrons accumulates in any place in significant quantities. The only exceptions are batteries and ultracapacitors. In these devices electrons moves unbalanced. But in batteries the flow of electrons is exactly compensated to match the charge by a stream of ions of some sort. In LI-ion batteries for example these ions would be single charge ions of Li. These ions are atoms of Li with 1 out of 3 electrons missing. So electrons disconnect from atom of Li included into cathode (negative voltage electrode) material and resulted Li ions move through electrolyte to anode (positive voltage electrode). The motion is produced by chemical energy (basically intermolecular electric field) forces because these ions would have lower energy on arrival to anode. Now if battery electrodes are not connected via conductive surface some trickle of Li ions would build up small unbalanced charge preventing further LI ions movement. So battery would hold the charge. Electrons could not move through electrolyte because it is not conductive material for electrons.
By connecting electrically conductive circuit between cathode and anode electrons would get path to move so they would move because unbalanced charge of Li ions created a 3.6 V of potential difference. By moving from cathode to anode electrons would meet ions of Li and recombine back to Li ions inserted into chemical composition of anode.

2. Ultracapacitors are the only devices I know working with unbalanced flow of electrons not compensated by flow of ions to match charge. In this case electrons just moves from one electrode to another and build up a charge and electric field. This field would be source of ultracapacitor energy. This is a fundamental difference between batteries and any capacitors. Ultracapacitors just manage fairly high unbalanced charges. By the way for a typical 3 kF, 2.7 V Maxwell ultracapacitor only ~8/100 of electrons per 1 gram of electrode material would move for the total charge of the whole capacitor. With about a pound mass of the capacitor we are talking about 2 electrons out of each 10000 available would move out of balance. And this is one of the largest unbalancing of electron concentration possible I know. So practically all electrical engineers just assume that electrons, ions and other charged patricles are always moving in perfect ideal charge balance.

3. The only case of producing electrons out of “nothing” or absorbing electrons to “nothing” would be radioactive beta decay, collisions inside high energy particle colliders etc. All these processes are very exotic and does not provide much electrons to talk about for technical things.

4. Lightning is the most prominent phenomenon related to unbalanced motion of electrons. It actually restore a balance which is gradually disturbed upfront by friction of water droplets and ice microcrystals in a cloud. Rains move some of this charge to ground with drops of water. As a result charge builds up between cloud and the ground. It corresponds to 1 to 10 million volts I guess at the lightning strike point.

To simplify the estimate consider a cloud and Earth surface as flat capacitor plates 10 km^2 area and 100 m distance. Such capacitor with air between plates would have capacitance ~1 uF only ( 3 billion times less than ultracapacitor I mentioned ). Even with 10 million volts the charge would be approximately 1 / 1000 fraction of the ultracapacitor charge I mentioned. It would be ~100 MJ of energy ( like a ~25 kg of high explosives equivalent ) but mostly due to high voltage but with little charge trasfer. This is a conservative estimate larger than any real lightning observed on Earth I think. Typical lightning would be 10 times less charge and 100 times less energy. As you could see even such a great electrical event as lightning corresponds to very little relative charge transfer indeed.

5. About compressed air you are correct about my approach. I made the most favorable estimate for compressed air principle by assuming that ALL available energy in this substance and in ambient air related to the process of gas expansion would be utilized for motion with no losses. This simplifies analysis dramatically. As you could see even under this ideal case energy density rules out compressed air principle for cars flat.

To Rene Guerra and Tony Belding about fusion:

Although it is surely convenient to blame “weeked Russians” for the failure of controlled fusion technology and Dr. Robert Bussard himself does it with obvious pleasure it is hardly the argument proving validity of his own approach.

I watched his lecture made in Google very attentively and at first I was impressed by the novelty of Dr. Robert Bussard approach. Been a physicyst I himself wandered what is so special about Tokamak and why to go with this expensive technology. Key differentiator of Dr. Robert Bussard approach is his claim that his system is working far from thermodynamic plasma equilibrium in contrast with Tokamak.

Unfortunately closer look at data he presented himself in Google lecture do not support his claims. In process of evolving his own approach to work he comes very close to the same plasma as used in Tokamak because he is also using magnetic field confinement and electrical neutrality of ions and electrons in his plasma is almost perfect. So his approach is another twist of Tokamak-style approach of magnetic plasma confinement with just different configuration of magnetic field regardless that this was not his original intent.

So chances of Dr. Robert Bussard approach success regadless of funding he could raise I would consider lower than for example chances of EEStore success. I do not believe either one would be possible ever. Apparently fusion could be managed energy positive (ironically Tokamak is closest to that). But I am convinced that this would be done at never competitive cost say 10 times higher than even solar power today. But solar power is better from all the angles as energy source - plentiful and ecological. So for me fusion is not an energy problems solution - would be always too expensive versus even best ecological alternatives. Fusion is a good way to make human space flights possible between planets. But as such it is not very interesting for mass scale further investment in research.

Does the Roadster plug into a wall socket?

—-

Editor’s Answer: Yes, take a look at the Charging and Batteries page. 

A) I just want to say thanks.
B) Since the Ford plant in Saint Paul, MN is shutting down you could get a functioning manufacturing facility and trained labor for a song.

Mr. Siri’s post seems to largely a waste of time. If I were a Tesla investor, I’m not sure I’d be happy about his efforts to reform the media. That’s not his job. He’s right that he should be concerned about Toyota, other big auto makers (not so sure about GM, Volt notwithstanding). He’s also right that he shouldln’t waste his time on garage-shop EV car makers, so I’m not sure why he then proceeds to do just that.

Here’s a bit of advice, Tesla’s short term success is almost assured. I have no doubt that electric vehicles WILL succeed and Tesla will be there. But the scariest scenario is exactly that success because it will prove to Toyota (who I’m sure is not sleeping) that the technology is viable. When that happens, I honestly don’t how Telsa competes. I’ll be grateful for your efforts that got us to that point, but I’ll be buying the E-Camry (or whatever it is).

If you want to earn your lunch, figure out how to stay alive in the electric car market when it mirrors the digital camera market. The big fish in the film era (Canon, etc), are the big fish now even though the thenology has vastly changed). They simply knew how to make cameras cheaper and better than everyone else, just like Toyota with cars.

>>All of you people furiously chasing the pipe dream of 10-minute charging..

Except that its not a pipe dream, not anymore. See Subaru R1E and TEPCO stations.
I agree, in 95% of use cases its not necessary, but having that fast-charge capability available in a specialized station when you need it, removes the last roadblock for wide adoption of EVs for ALL uses.
Its funny how people irrationally cling to those 5% of cases when they make purchasing decisions

Referring to technical information of the miracle battery pack of Roadster there is no
mention of energy (kWh), weight ,volume and the price to renew it.

In EVWORLD WERLDARTICLE: Advanced Auto Battery Progress Report “We estimate that there are over a hundred materials, chemicals, and battery companies, several thousand academic researchers, and hundreds of scientists in governmentowned laboratories involved in various aspect of litjium-ion battery technology R&D.” At well over $ 1 billion annually, which is several times the total investment in R&D for all other battery technologies combined. This article is strongly supporting HEVs and PHEVs forgetting totally EVs and ZEVs. I began to wonder after having read EVWORLD
ARTICLE: The Trouble with Lithium why Lithium, why not try other technologies.
There is a company which seeks financing to prove their technology of rechargeable
aluminium battery (www.europositron.com) which has at least 10 times more capacity than current batteries. That could be new power source for Teslamotors’s new cars!

God bless you, mr. Siry, and don’t let the oil freaks prejudice you!

# kert wrote on March 12th, 2007 at 7:32 am

# >>All of you people furiously chasing the pipe dream of 10-minute charging..

# Except that its not a pipe dream, not anymore. See Subaru R1E and TEPCO stations.
=================================================================

Could you (or someone else who has the info) please post a link or offline citation where details about these stations can be found? Again, recharge of 1 additional mile per minute is good, 2 miles per minute is excellent, and 3 miles per minute (the alleged recharge rate of the stations you mention) is beginning to outstrip the capability of most home and small business wiring — now you’re in power substation territory, especially if multiple vehicles will be quick-charged simultaneously at the same location. Even so, drivers are still only “topping off” a battery in 10 minutes or so, with maybe an additional 50 miles of range; a complete recharge of a Roadster-class battery pack would take around an hour. So I’m wondering how the logistics are handled, and whether these stations are economically practical. (Maybe they aren’t — perhaps Subaru sees them as “loss leaders,” necessary to convince people to switch to EVs en masse.)

I figured im going to use the wheel motors but in a different setup. I still feel if setup properly they could perform with outstanding ability.

Thank you anyway TEG.

# kert wrote on March 12th, 2007 at 7:32 am
## See Subaru R1E and TEPCO stations.
# James Anderson Merritt wrote on March 12th, 2007 at 11:24 am
## Could someone who has the info please post a link where details about these stations can be found?

Some details here:

www.fhi.co.jp/about/english/csr/pdf/2006/E_03.pdf

www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/tepco_and_fuji_.html
www.fhi.co.jp/news/05_07_09/05_09_02.pdf
response.jp/issue/2005/0902/article73971_1.images/93479.jpg

I think they need 200amps @ 200v for their quick charge.

They like Manganese instead of Cobalt in their fast-charge Li-Ions:
www.nec-tokin.com/english/product/me/chisiki/li8.html

An interesting calculation that I put together and figured I would share:

There are 2 metrics in which Li-Ion batteries have been consistently improving over the last 15 years or so - price per watt-hours ($/WH) and watt-hours per kilogram (WH/KG) it has also gained significantly in watt-hours per liter (Volume), but that does not significantly change its aplication in automobiles. When considering the Tesla Roadster, one must remember how much of the car is actually battery - the 2500 pound car has 1000 pounds of battery, making the battery 40% of the weight of the car. As such, approximately 40% of the energy expended by the the battery is used to trasport itself. Over the last 15 years Li-Ion batteries have fallen in $/WH by almost 16% per year. At the same time, the WH/KG has increased by approximately 6% per annum. What I would like to work on is the effect of the increase in WH/KG.
Given the static figures of the Roadster at 1500 pounds of car and 1000 pounds of battery, it is easy to deduce that a 6% increase in WH/KG, would allow for 6% less batteries to get the same capacity. But there is another effect of using less batteries - by using 6% less battery the total battery weight would be only 940 pounds instead of 1000, and the car would weigh 2440 pounds instead of 2500 - a reduction of 2.4%. But if the car weighs 2.4% less, it would need 2.4% less batteries to retain the same range and power! So we can reduce the 940 pounds of remaining batteries by 2.4% and end up with 917 pounds of batteries and 2417 pounds of car. but that car weighs almost 1% less than the 2440 pound car, and so would need 1% less batteries… this calcluation continues to repeat itself until a 6% reduction in weight, allows for approximately 4% less capacity to keep an equivelant capacity to weight ratio, and a total battery weight reduction of approximately 10%.
It is unfortunate that this calcutation diminishes year over year, since each year that the battery reduces in weight, it becomes a smaller percentage of the overall car, but what I did find was that over a ten year period, this feedback effect should reduce the required capcity for the Roadster from 50KWH to about 35KWH - or a reduction of over 26%. Assuming a static analysis for the next 10 years without any super-mega-ultra-capicitors making bateries obsolete… using the 15 year geometric average anual reduction in $/WH of 16%, and increase of WH/KG of 6% my estimate is that the Tesla Rodster of 2017 should sport a battery that costs less that 13.5% of what it costs today, and weighs just over 400 pounds making the Roadster a 1900 pound vehicle (probably give it some great handling).
BTW - it would also likely take up approximately 35% of the volume - in case you were looking to fit an extra set of golf clubs in the trunk.

Darryl,

How does the new lithium battery produced by A123 Systems (mentioned in this NY Times article: www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/yourmoney/11stream.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ) compare to Tesla’s battery?

Also, invidious comparisons aside, there is one positive aspect of your competitors being publicly traded: individual investors with their own skin in the game make the best evangelists. It’s nice that you’ve raised a ton of capital already (and that you’re giving little guys like Sergey Brin a chance to strike it big on their early-stage investment), but you ought to consider going public sooner rather than later. Investor-evangelists can help drive your car sales.

—-

Editor’s Answer: Take a look at the Balance blog. 

Was my question too annoying because you removed it from your blog. I am still waiting
the answer. I repeat it: If I were a Roadster buyer I would certainly like to know energy
capasity (kWh) of the battery pack, weight, volume and what part of the weight and the price of the car they represent. Is this too difficult for The Vice President of Marketing to answer?

—-

Editor’s Surprise: Take a look at the comments Martin - your original post is still there. Note that not all questions can be answered. Look at the Battery Whitepaper for some battery answers. The battery capacity is about 56kWh and the battery weight is about 450kg.

I have been trying to work out how large a solar PV array in KWH I would require to generate enough clean electricity to drive a Roadster the 19000 miles I currently drive a year. Are the following calculations / assumptions correct ?

Range of the Roadster = 250 miles with a 56Kwh battery pack. Thus watt hours per mile = 56000 / 250 = 224 Wh per mile.

Thus total electricity required to drive 19000 miles = 224 x 19000 = 4256Kwh.

Available Sun hours averaged throughout a year in the UK is approx 4.2 hours.

Thus 4256 Kwh / 365 days / 4.2 hours = 2.78 KW

Thus assuming a 90% efficiency for the inverter = 3.08KW array is required for 19000 miles a year.

There are probably lots of other losses I have missed i.e. the actual roadster charging losses etc but is this a good approximate figure?

David,

Thanks for those numbers.

A 2007 Tesla Roadster owner may wish to replace the battery in the car 5 years down the line because of reduced mileage per charge. To this there might be multiple options. (My numbers are not calculated)

Tesla may offer a much smaller and/or much lighter battery. For a car set up for a 1000 lb battery this might adversely affect the cars handling. You take hundreds of mid ship weight out and suddenly suspension, steering, handling etc. will all go out of whack with such a significant change. Perhaps Tesla is building some of these changes to be adjustable enough to be dialed-in to the current car. Or, they may have to offer an expensive car-handling retrofit service to go with the new battery. Some would pay it for an even better handling and faster car. (How much faster can it go?)

Another option might be to keep the weight / size the same by adding more batteries and increasing the total mileage. Now the car may go 350 miles on a charge (same charge time?)

I would think somewhere in-between would be best. A 10 percent lighter car that can be dialed-in and 10 percent more distance that lets you drive that fun farther.

It might even be better to wait for 7 years and get the 500-mile ESS that is their goal.

If practical and possible I would also take 10 percent more “golf club” room if I could get it.

www.teslamotors.com/display_data/3768med.mov

Anyone care to explain the engine sound when the car accelerates after coming to a full stop ?

Dave,

The a123 battery is a lot better (particularly with cycles and charge time) but there are 2 issues:
1) it was not available when they were designing their battery subsystem
2) it is very expensive

So for right now they use an inferior technology but in the future expect them to drop in the best peforming, cheapest solution. Basically this is not a major problem if eestor / a123 or any of these providers reach an economies of scale with viable technologies Tesla can just start using that tech and get greater range / lower cost / lower weight etc. Battery tech will continue to improve which means the picture for electric vehicles actually gets better over time and already it is in a position which is clearly superior to ICE.

I should note on a123 this system is real, it is on store shelves (Dewalt uses a123 cells in their 36v cordless power tool line). Also, RC hobbiest who traditionally push battery tech the furthest are having amazing results with these cells. The reason being if your laptop lasts a minute or two longer you tend not to notice but racing electric planes / cars / helicopters the batteries can mean the difference between winning and losing and even if you are not racing runtime and cycle life are huge. For example, an RC chopper you could run through 10 discharge cycles per day. Obviously this would not happen with a laptop (used for comparison because the tesla pack is based on similar cells as laptop batteries).

I still wonder about cost for a123 if they last 2x the cycles they can be 2x the price. For a company like Tesla using huge volumes you would think they could negotiate a much better price. In any case, perhaps some new tech will be used in time for White Star.

Now here is my major question / surprise. I wonder why Elon did not purchase a battery startup like a123. It seems like there are 3 pillars:
1) the car
2) the solar infrastructure (he created a company for this)
3) the power (cells)

Why let others control this? If you are going to ultimately be one of the largest car producers would you not want to own your supplier for batteries? I wonder what it actually costs a123 to make a cell…

Excellent article - I continue to be impressed with this company and their future.
I remembered an NPR interview regarding Science coverage by the media and tracked down one of the author’s articles:

Chris Mooney article:
How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality
www.cjr.org/issues/2004/6/mooney-science.asp

Best of luck and keep on plugging (no pun intended…)

For those who are using Macs to read this blog, and want to see the reverse from Black to white go Control, Option, Apple 8. Flip it again.

# Mark Tebbutt wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 8:10 am
## Range of the Roadster = 250 miles with a 56Kwh battery pack. Thus watt hours per mile = 56000 / 250 = 224 Wh per mile.

OK, although 250miles is during EPA highway cycle testing, so your driving habits could produce different results.

## electricity required to drive 19000 miles = 224 x 19000 = 4256Kwh.

OK… Another way is 19000mi / 56Kwh = 76 full charges… 76 * 56 = 4256Kwh
Keep in mind that batteries have some amount of self discharge, so you need to draw some “maintenance current” to offset any losses while parked.

## Available Sun hours averaged throughout a year in the UK is approx 4.2 hours.

Hours isn’t the only factor. Sub-optimal sun angle has the panels often giving less than peak rated power output.

## Thus 4256 Kwh / 365 days / 4.2 hours = 2.78 KW

Yep.

## Thus assuming a 90% efficiency for the inverter = 3.08KW array is required for 19000 miles a year.

Yeah. That sounds about right.

## There are probably lots of other losses I have missed i.e. the actual roadster charging losses

The panels often produce less than their peak because they aren’t likely to be angled directly at the sun the whole time. There could be shadows from clouds, trees, pollution, etc. Sub-optimal roof angle could hurt you more than inverter efficiency. A good inverter could be 95% efficient. You are right that there are losses going from AC power to DC to charge the batteries.

Check out my 3Kw system: TEG.NET/SOLAR/

I expect that the Tesla charger expects to draw a fixed current to charge, so you would need to be “grid tied” because your panels & inverter wouldn’t guarantee the constant current delivery the charger expects.

Tesla: Is that correct? Could someone have panels + inverter connected directly to a Tesla charger to charge as sun power is available, or do you expect full current at any time so it needs to be grid tied?

Thank you Max, thats very interesting indeed. I am a strong believer in what Tesla is doing but I don’t want to be BSd. Tesla, you owe us an a explanation. Why does that car sound like it has an ICE.

If Tesla isn’t doing their homework, which in all of my research thus far they seem to be, they will pay for it. Obviously, when it gets bleeping cold out.

Ronald Greene, com’on man, 6 months ago you were peddling some kind of perpetual motion machine, then you told us all that Tesla has 2-3 years to get their stuff together after the Chevy 3 motor piece of crap came out. Now your on to foam batteries, I’ve got a bunch of ocean front property in AZ to sell for 1 million, I mean 100 milliioon dollars, want to but it ?

Bottom line, it gets back to everything that is in this website. Somehow, nobody seems to want to read but comment on.

The batteries they use have the proper density that works for them, some batteries have more power, some have more density, but the wrong mix means too slow or to short of range. Eesstor is covered as well. Generator ideas as well.

I think if you ultimately want more range, create a tow along trailer with a generator. Won’t work for the Roadster, but who buys a sports car to go long distances. The generator idea is perfect because it is a constant RPM, perfect for effeciency and charging and is detachable. Take it on long trips, leave it home 90-99% of the time. That is what Tzero did as a proto-type. How hard is it to stick a bleeping generator in a mini-trailer ?

The batteries are available now !!! not in some future fairy tale land. This is what Chevy and the like have been doing for years. Leading everyone to think that Hydrogen or some other savior tech is around the corner, they have no intention of giving up the ICE that is their bread and butter.

Remember, back in the late 80’s we were having another crunch on energy and the Reagan Adm came out with some new discouvery about cold fusion, completely out of the blue. Everyone broke out their 1970 Chevelles and filled em up because in 2 years we would have free energy. Turns out after about 6 months it was a false alarm. Well that was because the same Adm took away all of the Alt fuel/Solar credits the moment the came into power and that is the way it is spun. Now think about that, you would think the President and his administration should have pretty good knowledge if that was fake or not. You would think that someone would say is this real ? is this certain ? This isn’t you or I trying to decipher info, but the highest office in the land. But it was fake, so is Hydrogen ( for different reasons ). BMW said they are selling their hydrogen car, with a possible fuel station for it slated for 2027. It’s all just delay tactics.

That is what I like the most about Tesla, they are going forward, trudging along with the common man. Making vehicles that work and can be produced, not in some future far off place, but now.

I know their first offering is 100K but haven’t they explained that enough. If the second one is as good as a the BMW they are targeteing, I might go for it even though it is a little out of my price range.

Just because !

One man wrote on another blog about Tesla, even if the big guys start selling ev’s now that they will go back to the ICE as soon as Tesla and the like disappear. That can’t happen. We may not get this opportunity again. We need to build up this company and others like it to make sure this tech sticks, otherwise we will all be back we we are today. That I can guarantee.

KC, I highly doubt publications risk losing advertising dollars by honestly discussing the potential future of EVs. Time Magazine didn’t lose any sleep over declaring the Tesla Roadster one of the 2006’s top inventions. Now, running a story that specifically bashes GM would piss off GM. But I think that’s the limit of the pressure their advertisers put them through.

(And to be honest, if a major publiciation openly criticizes GM, GM would then have to spend *more* advertising money on that publiciation to try and win back its now critical readership. They may threaten to leave, but they won’t. Leaving would mean admitting defeat and letting a big chunk of the American market go.)

A much simpler explanation is that if the popular press asks the hard questions, they don’t sell any more copies than if they don’t — except for journals with more upscale readerships, like Time. So why bother? Fluff’s faster, cheaper, and easier to produce.

In regards to the IEC fusion reactor proposal by Dr. Bussard: I was quite impressed with the Google lecture and his research notes about the subject, and he certainly has achived a significant break through in terms of achieving much more energy production than can be done with a traditional Farnsworth Fusor. This is very exciting in a number of ways, and importantly it also has the ability to green up the electrical power generation system in ways that even huge solar farms and power satellites would not. And these reactors, if they can be made to actually work, would be able to be retrofitted into existing power generation plants as they would still drive steam turbines that traditionally generate electricity.

One of the interesting things I was trying to see was if one of these IEC reactors would be able to be converted into something like the “Mr. Fusion” reactor on the movie “Back to the Future II”. Unfortunately its use as a power generator on that small of a scale does not appear to be as practical or efficient, but I might be mistaken. Certainly if you could get some sort of smaller fusion reactor coupled with a Tesla motor, that would be one kicking stinkin fish automobile and would get rid of even the need for batteries. Only a pipe dream, but you can wish, can’t you? And you would only have to “refuel” the tank once every million miles or so… talk about driving range!

I’ve been following fusion research (mainly as a knowledgeable layman, not a physicist), and unfortunately this proposal by Bussard appears to have the potential to grow and chew through money like the Tokamak reactors based on what I am seeing. This certainly is a radical change from the Tokamak approach (and needed in fusion research), but it is technological speculation at both its best and worst. There is sufficient promise in it, however, that a good angel investor into this form of R&D would significantly pay off in the long run. I hope Dr. Bussard is able to get somebody to seriously invest into those concepts and see where they might go.

# Max wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
# www.teslamotors.com/display_data/3768med.mov
# Anyone care to explain the engine sound when the car accelerates after coming to a full stop ?

I think you’re just hearing the ice.

>So why not feed our expectations with a teaser

Leave the teasing to the teasers. Keep working on the real thing.

# Max wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
# www.teslamotors.com/display_data/3768med.mov
# Anyone care to explain the engine sound when the car accelerates after coming to a full stop ?

If we’re all speculating, well…I’d put money on a car behind the camera. There’s a “squarish” shadow in the foreground that moves just about the time the (engine?) noise reaches it’s loudest. It could well be another vehicle…

Think about the power/energy density of your battery just a moment. So much capacity is available. The Teslamobiles of now and future can power anything during driving or sitting idle. Let’s say for instance that I’m in the middle of nowhere and would like to have a meal over my Foreman electric grill. Or maybe I’d like to keep a packed lunch with a drink ice cold, so I plug in one those portable freezer bags. Sorry maybe I’m just hungry : )! The point is no matter where he/she may choose to go they can literally use anything that “uses” electricity. The options are endless. It is things like these which mold together the whole Tesla Motors experience delivering early insight into our future. Im sure this company is always looking for suggestions. I highly reccommend adding an array of 110 outlets.

# Max wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
## www.teslamotors.com/display_data/3768med.mov
## Anyone care to explain the engine sound when the car accelerates after coming to a full stop ?

No wait! I zoomed in on the video and there is something fishy going on!

Check this out:
teg.net/TESLA/tice.jpg
:)

—-

Editor’s Mirth: Oh no - you worked it out! Too funny  

# Jeffrey wrote on March 14th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
# Think about the power/energy density of your battery just a moment.
# So much capacity is available.

In a way, this is a throwback to the erliest Ford models. You could decouple the engine from the transmission and instead use it to power machinery, even an electric generator. In a country of self-reliant people of mostly agrarian lifestyle or heritage, the Model-T was also a “powerhouse on wheels,” just as the Tesla may now be seen as a “battery on wheels.”

# Jeffrey wrote on March 14th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
## Teslamobiles of now and future can power anything during driving or sitting idle
##The point is no matter where he/she may choose to go they can literally
## use anything that “uses” electricity.
## The options are endless.
## It is things like these which mold together the whole Tesla Motors experience delivering
## early insight into our future. Im sure this company is always looking for suggestions.
## I highly reccommend adding an array of 110 outlets.

You can already do that with an ICEmobile. 12vDC->120v AC inverters are common. The ICE is happy to keep turning the alternator to recharge the 12v battery to keep your small appliances going just the same.
www.tripplite.com/products/inverters/index.cfm

The only real advantage of the Tesla pack would be for high current applications such as if you want to have an arc welder accessory. Low riders could find plenty of power for a hydraulic suspension. You could also power massive amplifiers for a ground thumping audio system. Ghetto Tesla here we come.

# Max wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
# www.teslamotors.com/display_data/3768med.mov
# Anyone care to explain the engine sound when the car accelerates after
# coming to a full stop ?

That has been noted and commented on by others. Blame an omnidirectional microphone that picked up the sound of a car behind the camera. Look closely in the lower right corner, and you will see the moving shadow of the other vehicle.

This winter testing area is used by many car companies, so Tesla wasn’t the only one there!

Still no concrete answer on the engine sound on the tape. I don’t but that it was a vehicle off to the side as the sound corresponds to much with movement of the Tesla. That is definetely not the sound of tires on ice.

Sounds like a 4 cyl ICE but that wouldn’t be in a Lotus, what gives ?

If they used a motor temporarily for some other testing so be it, just admit it and move on. That is perfectly acceptable to me for some intermediate test stage.

But don’t BS us, too much at stake, too many singing the praises of your efforts.

Awesome mock-up TEG that was classic.

—-
Editor’s Answer: There is no ICE in the test vehicle. I am still trying to find someone that attended the test to give me an opinion on the sound. No BS.

TEG wrote:
- You can already do that with an ICEmobile. 12vDC->120v AC inverters are common. The ICE is happy to keep turning the alternator to recharge the 12v battery to keep your small appliances going just the same.
www.tripplite.com/products/inverters/index.cfm

- The only real advantage of the Tesla pack would be for high current applications such as if you want to have an arc welder accessory.

I disagree. Another advantage, the real advantage I think Jeffrey was referring to, is that you would be able to run your appliances without the motor turned on.

Having an ICE idling to achieve the same results is noisy and, worst of all, very wasteful. Most of the energy is lost, way more fuel being used to do the same work.

Good explanation of your plans, I believe you are exactly on the right track. Any discussion on the possibility of developing a new luxury automobile, using a historic Brand such as Duesenberg? I think this would really add to the interest of both the press and the public.

To: John Applegate who wrote on March 14th, 2007 at 12:39.
Response from Ronald Greene:

Sorry John, but you need to get your facts straight I have never advocated any form of “perpetual motion machine”. I believe this was a TV show that talked about a compressed air car. The U.S. Patent Office will not issue a patent for any such machine. As for G.M. it has announced that the Chevy Volt will be put into production in 2010 all I did was to relay the information. You may not like G.M. cars but they have spent over 500 million dollars to build state of art electric cars more than anyone else and I appreciate that because we can now build upon that knowledge.

As to “lead foam batteries” if you would be so kind as to actually read the patent 6,979,513 you might be able to understand what I am
talking about. This research was funded by Caterpillar Inc. whom I do not think would appreciate your remarks as a lot of hardwwork, years and money went into this discovery which increases the lead acid batteries output from 30 Whr/kg to 170 Whr/kg. Such an increase in battery power would make both the EV 1 and the Chevy Volt viable electric cars right now which we could both afford to buy.

# TEG wrote on March 15th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

# If you want to park and use a lot of electricity the roadster pack probably
# isn’t the best source.

Not to mention that using it for anything BUT propelling the vehicle will reduce the number of miles you can get out of the pack in its lifetime. It may be cool to cook a mini-pizza or do some spot-welding, but it won’t be cool to pay $20,000 or more to replace the battery pack ahead of schedule. Those would be some expensive pizzas! On the other hand, if cheap, long-lived batteries arrive anytime soon, that cost-benefit equation could change. Make mine a combination with shrimp, no anchovies!

I really think Tesla Motors should issue this blog as a press release. If the media are always regurgitating press releases (and they are, even for Tesla Motors; I’ve seen several “stories” about the roadster which were just the official press release about it, down to the bit about the bumpers and crash tests at the bottom), then this one ought to be regurgitated to the public.

Just a thought.

RE: The Media Needs to Toughen

I just read this article on cnn and was quite offended that tesla motors wasn’t mentioned by the automotive editor from Popular Science Magazine - who apparently has only heard about the Chevy Volt hybrid. Shouldn’t someone in that position know more about this stuff?
www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/03/09/cars.adams.cnna/index.html

I’ve perused the Popular Science website to find an article on the Roadster but haven’t found one.
Am I missing something here? - shouldn’t there be a pile of articles on Tesla’s progress in this particular publication?

Question for the Editor

Blogs not updating.

It’s 10:31 on Friday 16 March (UK time)

The most recent post I can access on this blog is “KC wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 10:01 pm”

Nothing more recent is appearing. Has another blog already been published after Darryl Siry’s plea to media to toughen up their questions re EVs?

I’ve tried typing in the URL : www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=54

which should access the next blog, but all I get is the message: “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”

Any tips?

—-

Editor’s Confession: There will be no blog this week Normal service will resume next week! 

Yesterday Th!nk updated their website: www.think.no/ (in Norwegian). Not much new technical information except a little detail on range, apparently for different conditions (summer/winter with heating turned on), as well as pricing and lease for the battery in Norway.

# Editor’s Confession: There will be no blog this week
# Normal service will resume next week!

Ok, that’s a shame, but I’m sure the Tesla Blog-watch community can find things to discuss for another week. Let’s face it, we usually manage to drift off-topic within the first ten posts anyway

So I’ll post a couple of articles on batteries:-

www.intersil.com/data/an/an126.pdf

techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070110/126295/

Anyone else?

Interesting battery articles. Presumably, the first-generation Tesla will be future-proofed to accommodate more advanced battery-pack replacements, in terms of increased capacity, faster charging, and so on.

Also, a semi-serious feature request. Given that the car’s range depends on the speed it’s driven, the navigation system should warn the driver if he’s going too fast to reach his destination. For instance, I live near Santa Barbara, so a round-trip to LA is roughly 200 miles. This may be within the car’s range at 70mph, but perhaps not at 90mph… Are there any empirical figures yet on the Tesla’s range as a function of speed? I suppose it also depends on whether the car is driven as hardtop/softtop/convertible, or whether the AC is running… but I don’t think Tesla owners want to find out the hard way!

Finally, the Tesla appears very low to the ground… Has this caused any problem with standard-size speedbumps? There are some fairly large ones in my neighborhood that are impossible to drive around, and I’d hate to see that become a showstopping problem.

In regard to the 210KWH charger. AeroVironment, INC. www.avinc.com is rumored to be developing the charger and special conectors for EVs. The Posicharge 300SVS is a 500amp 96V DC charger which is one of the highest powered chargers I found on the AVinc website. The 300SVS has a 480V AC input. One of AVinc’s projects is MVS systems which charge both High and Low voltage vehicles. Another good source of information is Electric Drive Transportation Association

What is the embedded carbon footprint for tour car.?
How are you proposing to keep your carbon emmissions to a minimum during the manufacturing process. ?
How much of your car is recyclable, including the batteries?
Do the batteries harbour envitonmentally or toxic substances?
What is the total life in miles for the batteries before they require replacing?

—-

Editor’s Answer: There is lots of battery info on the battery page. Also, take a look at this early blog article from Elon - specifically “I wouldn’t recommend them as a dessert topping, but the Tesla Motors Lithium-Ion cells are not classified as hazardous and are landfill safe. However, dumping them in the trash would be throwing money away, since the battery pack can be sold to recycling companies (unsubsidized) at the end of its greater than 100,000-mile design life. Moreover, the battery isn’t dead at that point, it just has less range.”

Let me see if I can track down an answer to the other questions. 

Interview with Martin Eberhard, good substitute for a blog entry:

www.mlive.com/mbusinessreview/oak/index.ssf?/mbusinessreview/oak/stories/20070315_tesla.html

:-)

RE “Journalists frequently ask me to comment about competitors of Tesla Motors. I list the following: GM, Ford, Toyota, and Nissan.”

GM lost an estimated $976 million on electric vehicles,
Ford lost millions on the Think, Toyota is not going electric,
and Nissan is a French company that was against high
costs hybrids and is focused on costs per vehicle (see analysis below)…

EV IMPACT TODAY

All four companies + Tesla do not have a single EV in showrooms,
in other words, from strictly an EV standpoint, all five companies are
NOT saving any oil, reducing carbon output, or helping mankind…YET…

Why didn’t you mention Damiler Chrysler (GEM) or Mitsubishi?

What about Subaru?

Those producer’s green products with Toyota have saved
millions of barrels of oil, gallons of gas
and pounds of carbon and deadly smog…

THE PATENT END GAME

Toyota’s is winning the green car game
having started with 1,000 engineers on the
G21 project that became 650 Prius patents…

Who’s winning the EV patent war?

How many patents does GEM have or Mitsubishi EVs soon to be on the road?

How many patents do you have on the Roadster?

Is Tesla an OEM or a OEM’s R&D shop
such as one of the 1,200 companies
owned by Honda and Toyota???

WHAT IS TESLA?

Which GM, Ford, Toyota and Nissan are you talking about,
the North American sales units, R&D, manufacturing, etc?

If it’s a OEM R&D shop, patents are the output,
and when you say Toyota is a competitor,
are you competing with Toyota R&D?

If so, you better get on the track fast…

If not, and you think you are competing with Toyota North America
how many sales and marketing and finace do you have on staff?

if it’s a OEM, shareholder value is the output,
and usually MBAs connect to the street,
so how many MBAs do you have on board?

As an MBA, a 5 min. analysis estimated based on
200 units delivered OEM style with no sales costs,
at an assumed $80 million burn over two years…

your cars cost $400,000 each
but they sold for $100,000 ea.

GM’s run of give or take 2,000 EVs cost roughly one billion,
or just about the same as Tesla at $500,000 each,
but at $500 per month for 24 months of leases,
let’s assume a 2 year run and a $24 million gross.

Tesla’s bottom line = $300,000.00 loss per vehicle
GM’s failed EV-1 = $488,000.00 loss per vehicle

No shareholder will put up with this for the long run
no matter how sexy or fast or cleantech the car is…

What is Tesla Motors?

A bleeding OEM or a R&D shop driving straight
towards bankruptcy or a buyout candidate
worth cents on the dollar because of a lack
of global industry relative patents???

Pete wrote on March 13th about batteries (my favourite topic). He suggested that Tesla should buy a company like a123. The battery market is way too volatile, no one manufacturer has clearly got a winner yet. Tesla can switch to whatever is best as time goes on. Even committing to a long term purchase agreement with a manufacturer would be a bad idea in my opinion. I fear that a123 has made a mistake parterning with GM/Chevron as Cobysys has a history of using its patents to keep electric and hybrid vehicles off the market and that could be their goal with a123. EEStor is a small private company making extraordinary claims (which our resident physicist Anatoly says are not possible), and they say they will be in production before the end of the year. It won’t be long before we will know if EEStor is real, but if they do live up to their claims then the Roadster could go over 600 miles between charges for about half the expense on the battery pack. With this the need for quick charge stations will evaporate.

The issue of future-proofing the ESS is an interesting one.

As I understand it, the ESS and PEM are designed as one system. A simply like-for-like replacement wouldn’t be a technical problem (although the cost is, at present, unknown) but you couldn’t simply swap out the 6831 2.2Ah batteries and upgrade the ESS with Matsuhalibuta’s newer 2.9 Ah or even 3.6Ah cells (assuming these prove to be suitable for EVs). The charge-balance and temp monitoring and control systems in the ESS would need to be adjusted. The PEM would have to be reconfigured to match their different discharge characteristics and charging protocols would have to be tweaked as well (especially for the full-charge-in-a-few-hours requirement).

So for the early Tesla models at least, it seems likely that upgrades would have to be offered in matched pairs. Upgrading the ESS to different batteries (capacity and/or chemistry) would require a new matching PEM. (Again - simply replacing the ESS wouldn’t require a replacement PEM)

A future-proof system would need to be “ESS-aware”. An upgraded ESS would need to store the equivalent of a BIOS upgrade for the PEM as well. On first power-up, the PEM recognises that the ESS has been changed and downloads the relevant data from it to reconfigure itself.

Also. Should EVs offer Max Power Control in order to maximize range on long trips? It’s a sort of user-set limiter. Choose your power setting 15, 16, 17kW etc etc. Whatever. It will limit your maximum acceleration rate and top speed (in given driving conditions) in order to maximize range. Obviously as with Cruise Control, there must be some sort of quick cancel option.

My eye is on Tesla Motor Company. I, and others, are very excited by the upcoming Tesla roadster. I fully believe that Tesla Motors will go down in history as revolutionizing, not only the automotive industry, but indeed our way of life. If one considers the implications of pairing electric cars with the ever increasing conversion to solar energy, the world will indeed, change — so much for the better.

Not only is what Tesla doing real, it is of paramount importance that it succeeds. The future of the world depends on such innovation and forward thinking.

I agree that state and federal governments do indeed get plenty of revenue from every gallon of gasoline… but I don’t see a problem with them getting similar revenue from many other fuel sources such as biofuel or hydrogen, heck, easiest solution would be to tax all electricity generating sources and let most things run on electricity….then we will start to see people producing thier own electricity underground, kinda like moonshine, or perhaps solarshine?

# kert wrote on March 18th, 2007 at 8:26 am

# by what means will the energy be delivered? Nobody is saying…
# From another identical battery bank, sitting home and slow-charging
# while you drive around ?

But fast-charge would be most useful on the road, or to benefit those who don’t have a secure garage in which to charge their vehicles. Would that level of demand be sufficient to motivate “service station” operators to keep multiple “identical battery banks” recharging continually to serve fast-charge customers?

# Or from a flywheel, or from a ultracap bank, or from a really high-voltage line,
# whatever turns out to be cheaper.

This is all speculation, and beside the point, which was this: while it is good that ZAP is announcing realistic “fast-charge” for its existing vehicles, it continues to promote a “feature” for its future vehicle, which requires significant infrastructure enhancements that haven’t yet been demonstrated at full-scale, much less developed for mass-production or consumption.

# If the history would be another way around for some reason, and we’d be
# discussing inftastructure for ICE refuelling, a lot of people would bulge their eyes
# and say “big underground gasoline tanks ? pumps to drive them ? hoses ? big trucks
# to refill the tanks ? people will NEVER come close to such a station!! ICE cars will
# never be fast-fuelled”

Your contrafactual situation just isn’t plausible. There was always enough gasoline available to demonstrate fast-fueling for a single ICE vehicle. The only question was how to collect and dispense enough of it around the country to serve hundreds or thousands of motorists per day per service station. Big tanks, tank trucks, hoses, and pumps were all well understood, even commonplace, for other purposes in the early 20th century. It was easy for people to imagine putting all of those elements together into a functioning gas station. And, after the first few didn’t catch fire and explode, people could be convinced that the danger was minimal.

In the EV case, somebody needs to point to a demonstration showing that even a SINGLE EV has been recharged at the speedy rates alleged, and that the fast charge process did not have adverse effects on the life of the battery. Also, electricity has a special nature and limitations (for example, I-squared-R heat loss), which differ markedly from those of gasoline. Fast-charge facilities will require some beefy electrical fixtures, in order to deliver large quantities of energy to multiple vehicles while remaining safe for the operators and vehicle drivers under various weather conditions.

I’m not saying that any of this is impossible. I’m just saying that the necessary facilities will not materialize overnight, since the engineering challenges are real and significant. If ZAP, for example, cannot show a prototype “fast charge filling station” at the same time it shows a ZAP-X concept car, then it won’t have much justification for promoting the car’s “fast charge” capability, because early owners won’t be able to take advantage of it for some time. It would be like saying that your car can drive nimbly over ice and snow, without saying that such a feat would be possible only using special snow-tires which haven’t yet been designed, much less demonstrated or manufactured. Someday, yes. And at that time, you’ll have a true product feature. But don’t sell what won’t be available for years.

John A.

Your analysis is really poorly done.
Just where did you get the initial capital to base your loss per vehicle on?
You aparently were not aware that Tesla is a private company. There is no stock holder pressure except for the people that invested private money as they believe in the concept.

This is far more improved over the cut throat public companies in which the only concern is this quarter and possibly one quarter in the future.

Tesla has drive, vision and a plan. I just wish they would be a little more forth-coming on the safty test schedule

My compliments,
the article “Can Silicon Valley Reinvent The Car” by Elizabeth Corcorran in Forbes.com today was really interesting (impressive). Looking into the efficiency figures and comparisons you have published (”21st CentElectricCar”) die idea, which has already been materialised, is more than promising to those who do not want to pollute the world, while driving.
Wishing you good luck with your investments in the US, the country responsible for most of the CO2 Emission and where the administration has not yet signed the Kyoto protocol! I hope Tesla will be tolareted.
Ferit Erozlu,
Turkey

Elon Musk has a nervous night tonight .. his _second_ great project, SpaceX Falcon rocket is trying for another maiden launch attempt. best of luck to them.

QUESTION: Will Tesla learn from General Motors mistakes or will it repeat them? The shortcomings of electric vehicles was outlined
by GM Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz:

“The EV1 was the benchmark in battery technology and was a tremendous achievement. Even so, electric vehicles, in general ,
had limitations. They had limited range. limited room for passengers or luggage, couldn’t climb a hill or run the air conditioning
without depleting the battery and had no device to get you home when the battery’s charge ran low.”

I do not think that Tesla Motors can afford to make this same mistake. EV’s will not be accepted by the general public until these shortcoming are overcome and their performance is equal to or better than the internal combustion engine that we now have. The question then is how does an electric vehicle equal the performance of an ICE. The problem that we have with electic cars is not
one that a better battery is going to solve as that simply delays the problem for when the battery’s charge does runs low and you are in the
middle of nowhere , just how to you get home? The problem is in how we view the invention of the EV, it is a conceptual problem.
The truth is the invention of the EV is incomplete. When the EV was invented all that we havd to run them with was storage batteries.
Do we really want to keep runing our EV’s on stored energy went it will forever keep running out of juice and leaving us high and dry?

The solution is for us to think differently. Why store energy in heavy batteries when we can generate as much energy as we need for as long as we need it. What is the point of recharging our electric cars from generators in a large power plants somewhere went we can
recharge them from generators on our own cars which is far more efficient as it does not have to travel long distances and lose power.
Further, the grid is not going to be their for us because no one is buiding any power plants and blackouts are in our future. In fact , we
may need our generated EV’s to power our houses when blackouts happen.

General Motors learned a hard lesson about EV’s and that lesson is that if the performance of an EV is to be equal or better than that of
an ICE you need to replace the energy in the batteries as fast as you use it and the batteries must always be fully charged so that you can
go up the steepest hills for as long as you want even with the air conditoning, lights and everyting else on however long it takes.
While most people here do not understand the importance of a “series hybred” it is a big step foreward as it is the first practicle
electric car that will perfrom on an equal footing with any ICE because your battery will always be fully charged and it can operate anywhere in the world, in any climate and it will nevery leave you without a way to get home. I would like to see Telsa succeed
but if they are not willing to intertain the idea of a self-recharging electric vehicle they will be doomed to repeat the same mistake
as G.M. and their opportunity will be lost.

# Ferit EROZLU wrote on March 19th, 2007 at 9:34 am
# … the article “Can Silicon Valley Reinvent The Car” by Elizabeth Corcorran in Forbes.com
# today was really interesting (impressive).

The reporter seemed suitably wowed, but this is the 2nd instance of high-profile Roadster coverage that I’ve encountered to mention a significant malfunction. In the Forbes case, the spedometer was broken. In the Today Show segment with Natalie Morales, it was a drivetrain issue that famously brought the road test to a halt.

How hard is it to keep these demo units in good repair? One of the alleged benefits of EVs is the simpler, hardier mechanism they employ. So far, I’m not getting as much of that sense from the high-profile press accountts of Roadster test drives as I think I probably should, this late in the development process. Around now, I’d be expecting Tesla to be doing pilot assembly line runs and using those vehicles for test drives and promotion.

# kert wrote on March 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
## Elon Musk has a nervous night tonight ..
## his _second_ great project, SpaceX Falcon rocket is trying for another maiden launch attempt.

Delayed at least a day:
news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070320/sc_space/spacexscrubsmondaylaunchattemptforfalcon1rocket

Stefan:

“I personally think that the stock market has caused enormous damage to economic principles in our capitalist society by providing an incentive to corporations to ignore the interests of workers and consumers and focus instead on the all-important stockholders.”

“The all-important stockholders”? If only those of us who invested in common stocks were so well regarded by corporate management. Think of the former CEO of Home Depot, who refused to answer shareholders’ questions at their last annual meeting, and then left the company with $200 million of the shareholders’ money after running HD’s stock price into the ground for several years (while competitor Lowes beat the Street”.

Haha!! Yeah like David said, I also really wanna see Bond riding in a Tesla in his next flick. I’m a huge Bond fan guys, so I’ll be looking out for your car. : D

# David Kosowsky wrote on March 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

# Gotta believe lots of folks in hollywood would love to feature the Roaster
# in a movie, perhaps the next Bond flick.

{Blofeld intently watching moving dot on GPS display, while stroking his pug-faced cat} “That’s right, Mr. Bond, you may think you made a fast, quiet getaway, but I know you have only 250 miles of range, and I own the service station with the only fast-charger on that stretch of highway. You have to come to ME! BWAH ha ha ha haaaaaaaaa!”

Is the Whitestar sport sedan going to be available with a folding hardtop? Yes, I understand, there hasn’t been a four door sedan with a convertible top since the 1930s. But, I figure, the sedan will also eventually be available as a coupe; and a coupe with a folding hardtop provides maximum marketing flexibility from a single platform. Offering optional hand controls also would make the vehicle a very attractive product for the handicapped, at little or no extra cost to the manufacturer.

Darryl, I agree with your comments that the media needs to do its homework. These folks run around on such tight deadlines, they rarely do the research and homework they need to in order to get the story right.

There are two things that Tesla needs to do in order to better get their message out: 1) continue working with the media to get the story straight (which can sometimes be tough, especially when they do a story without ever notifying you in advance), and 2) develop very innovative and compelling marketing programs that tell the story the way you want it told. Also, leveraging well-respected envoironmental thought leaders (e.g. Al Gore) for “endorsements” will go a long way as well.

One last note - you talk about the scams that are propagated by some “EV” companies. Funny how things change, but they really stay the same. Edwin Black’s book, “Internal Combustion” spends the first 100 pages describing how companies at the turn of the century (the 20th, not the 21st) were all scamming the public and investors using electric cars as the lure. It’s a very good book about how EVs were sacrificed for ICEs.

Great blog, everyone. I look forward to reading more in the future!

- John

To Daniel Florek March 20th, 2007 at 9:49am

Yes, A123Systems LI ON batteries have been tested by independent labs as safer and better. General Motors has signed a 15 million
contract for their use in the Saturn Vue and it is on the verge of awarding A1243Systems a similar contract for the Volt . I urged Tesla
to swicth to these batteries long ago and now it is too late as they will have their hands full keeping G.M. supplied. People are all ready
to buy the Chevy Volt as soon as it is in production. The only problem will be the price of the battery pack which weighs 400 lbs. This
will probably raise the price of the car by $10,000 but that s a lot easier to take than Tesla’s 900 lb battery pack at about $24,000. While
the design ot Tesla’s White Star is still unknown I do not see how such a heavier car without a way to self-recharge the batteries will be
able to compete with GM’s Volt. See www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/yourmoney/11stream.html?ex=1331269200&en… 3/17/2007 or type article name “A New Battery Takes Off in a Race to Electric Cars” in your search engine.

I don’t remember seeing this posted to these blogs before, but here is a CNET article that talks about the current status of the SolarOne concentrated-solar-thermal powerplant, which is due to go online from the Boulder City NV area in April. SolarOne produces pricey power (maybe 2-2.5x market rate per kW), but it’s very “green,” and eminently appropriate for the terrain and climate. Perhaps continued development will knock the expense of SolarOme or future plants down to the point of being competitive with more conventional sources (or the price of kWs could go up to render SolarOne competitive even sooner). The plant will last for decades, so there is a good prospect for long-term Return on Investment.

news.com.com/Full+steam+ahead+for+Nevada+solar+project/2100-11392_3-6166113.html?tag=st.rn

Incidentally, my back-o-th-napkin calculations indicate that the initial 64MW, 300 acre (just under one-half square mile) plant could solidly support over 26,000 Roadster-class-vehicles, even assuming only 8 hours per day of sun and only six months of sunny days (180) per year (the town actually boasts 320 such days annually).

Even at a rate of 0.17 cents per kWh, a Roadster-class vehicle getting 250 miles per ESS recharge would save me $42 per week in fuel costs over my Ford Taurus. This isn’t that important a comparison against the expensive Roadster, but it will become more relevant when Whitestar and any other follow-on vehicles arrive.

In responce to the post about about having to charge the Altair Nanotechnologies batteries at higher amps and volts is just not true. If you would have done more research you would see that their technology is diferent in that “with a nano-structured component, there’s more surface area available to the ions—up to 100 times more surface area than with conventional, graphite electrodes.” This means that you can keep the same 220v in your home and the batteri its self will absorbe more electrons in a shorter amount of time, thus the 10 minute charge time.

I believe that Tesla has stated many times over that they choose “at this time” in the dev process to not switch technologies. Altair nano is still very new and who knows what will happen with the technology. Perhapps in a few years Tesla will do more research on how these batteries will work with their cars and then make a partnership. For now, I agree with Tesla that they should stick to what they know works best and has been proven. Its critical that their first fleet launch of cars is a succuess.

TEG wrote on March 19th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

# kert wrote on March 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
## Elon Musk has a nervous night tonight ..
## his _second_ great project, SpaceX Falcon rocket is trying for another maiden launch attempt.

OK - it went up, but not entirely as planned:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17695361/
Elon Musk quote: “It’s been a pretty nerve-wracking day”

I could not find anything in the review of the specs for the Tesla that mentioned heating or air conditioning. Could someone confirm whether there is heating and cooling?
What is the impact of using battery energy to run the heater or air conditioner relative to the energy required for propulsion? If I get stuck in stop-and-go traffic, the electric car is great since there is no waste in running the motor, but how long would the heater or air conditioning last before I need to worry about getting back to my charger?

—-

Editor’s Answer: Take a look at the technical specification - there is air conditioning. The impact on the range from the use of heating/air conditioning/lights is minimal. 

# Robert Fallin wrote on March 20th, 2007 at 8:59 am
## Is the Whitestar sport sedan going to be available with a folding hardtop?
## Yes, I understand, there hasn’t been a four door sedan with a convertible top since the 1930s.

There are a few exceptions…
www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/naias_2005/0502_2+ASC_Helios_4door_Convertible+Drivers_Side_View.jpg
www.4driversonly.com/50226711/peugeot_convertible.jpg
www.travis-usa.com/images/Vehicles/1964LincolnCnvtOpen.jpg
z.about.com/d/vintagecars/1/0/v/4/61_linc_hazy.jpg
www.car-nection.com/cadillacdatabase/Dbas_ima/Tba62c.JPG
www.shannons.com.au/library/images/auctions/UB03AA74VKA3FF7J_medium.jpg

Robert, if you would have done more research you would see that “more electrons in a shorter amount of time” is simply the definition of “higher amps”.

“This means that you can keep the same 220v in your home and the batteri its self will absorbe more electrons in a shorter amount of time”

Sadly electrons are the electric current. They have to flow through wires. More electrons equals more electric current passing through the wires and “into” the battery. If you need to store 50kWh of energy then 50kWh of energy must be put in from somewhere in 10 minutes. If you can do that without anything catching fire or anyone being electrocuted (if you choose the high voltage route), excellent.

It’s a Physics thing.

I’m pleased for A123Systems if they get awarded a contract from GM. Good for them. Financial security for a startup is obviously an attractive thing. GM wants to get licences to cover what might be termed “automotive lithium batteries” in just the same way that it locked down licenses for NiMH in the 90s. Part of it’s ability to, er, control the market.

By staying with non-auto battery manufacturers, Tesla is wisely avoiding future licence fees.

One thing though. Take a look at the datasheet from the A123 website:

www.a123systems.com/html/products/ANR26650M1%20Datasheet.pdf

“Nominal Voltage 3.3V, Nominal capacity 2.3Ah” in a larger 26mm diameter by 65 mm length cell which is 70 grammes. It’s a bit naughty of them to promote the battery using Watts per kilogramme and Watts per Litre. They should really give us ratings in Watt-Hours per kg or per litre, i.e the Energy Density rather than the Power Density.

More to the point, Matsus-h-i-t-a are already at 2.9 Ah, and in the smaller 18 mm x 65 mm cell.

techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070110/126295/

Ronald Greene wrote: The only problem will be the price of the battery pack which weighs 400 lbs. This will probably raise the price of the car by $10,000 but that s a lot easier to take than Tesla’s 900 lb battery pack at about $24,000.

Unless you have to replace the Volt’s battery three times as often as the Roadster’s.

Hybrids punish battery packs more than pure EVs

www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=27

In the last post, I should have said, “to move more energy in any given time period.” Obviously, if you can afford to wait a long time, you can fill the Olympic pool with the garden hose. That situation would be similar to charging your ESS from the normal wall current (or, better yet, from the solar panels that everyone keeps suggesting the Roadster should have ).

“Mr Brown said he had asked Sir Nicholas Stern - author of the Stern Review - to work with Professor Julia King of Aston University on developing “the next generation of low and no carbon vehicles”. ”

Excerpt taken from a report on the Green aspects / measures of the UK annual Budget by Chancellor of Exchequer Gordon Brown. Full report here news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6474987.stm

Maybe Tesla should contact Brown, Stern and King to inform them that the next generation of no carbon vehicles will arrive shortly!

# pierre wrote on March 21st, 2007 at 7:31 am
# the WhiteStar will cost 50.000$
# what is the US market for more than 50.000 $ cars?

Personally, I’d be willing to pay a $15k+ premium for an electric car over an equivalent gasoline car.
Would I buy a $35k car ? yes, a $50k WhiteStar ? YES ! can’t wait !

Aside from moral issues, here are my basic numbers:
at 30mpg & $3 gas (or 20mpg & $2 gas) -> a gas car costs ~ 10 cents / mile
electric car ~ 1 cent / mile
So you save 9 cents / mile on the electric.
So it will take ~166,666k miles to recoup the extra $15k.

You might not keep the car long enough to put that many miles on it, but the resale value will be higher than a gas car.
The battery might need to be replaced after 100k miles, but I’m assuming the cost is comparable to all the oil changes and services over that period that you DON’T need to do on the electric car.

But for me there’s 2 main reasons to buy this car:
1. Moral Issues: The Environment, war
2. To have the latest stuff and stand out from the crowd.

I have a hard time believing that there will be much of a replacement market for the batteries after the 100K miles… Looking at the Kelly’s Blue Book Value for a 1995 5 series BMW in good condition with 100,000 miles, you see that it is worth less than $7500. If you had a Whitestar with a battery that was getting minimal charge the cost of replacing the battery will likely be more than the vehicle is worth. So when you calculate the overall cost of ownership of a whitestar you should include no gas and maintenance for 12 years, followed by no resale value. So you would be saving around 9 cents a mile or $765 a year on fuel, plus around $250 a year in maintenance savings brings you to $1,015 a year in savings… assuming a 10% NPV, the present value of the fuel and maintenace savings would be more than $6,900, while the present value of the car resale would be less than $2,400 - giving a net greater value to the EV of around $4,525. So all else being equal, assuming the White Star is of comprable quality and luxury as a 5 Series BMW it would be worth (from a purely economical standpoint) $4,525 more. Or put another way, if your auto budget is $45,000, you could still by a White Star at $50,000.

“pierre wrote on March 21st, 2007 at 7:31 am
the WhiteStar will cost 50.000$
what is the US market for more than 50.000 $ cars? ”

I’m going try awfully hard to get one. My goal is to get the $65,000 white star. I would have NEVER purchased a gasoline car for that price. Well, maybe when I had gotten old and rich- like 45 or so

# Arthur W. Hanson wrote on March 21st, 2007 at 4:48 am
## The cost of photo voltaic solar is about to come down dramatically in two years.
## The chairman of Applied Materials
## stated that they will drive down the cost to less than a dollar a watt for solar cells.

Related Links:
blogs.business2.com/utilitybelt/2007/02/applied_materia.html
www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=3822
www.appliedmaterials.com/news/solar_strategy.html

Also, there seems to be a phenomenon of one-upmanship for Silicon Valley companies to install ever larger solar installs.

biz.yahoo.com/bw/070314/20070314005323.html
“Applied Materials, Inc., announced today that it will install over 1.9 megawatts of solar power generation capability at its research campus in Sunnyvale, California. This is believed to be the largest solar power installation on an existing corporate facility in the United States.”

boingboing.net/2006/10/16/googleplex_goes_sola.html
“Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA will soon become America’s largest solar electric installation on a single corporate site, and one of the largest such projects in the world. (They) will build an installation at the Googleplex with a total capacity of 1.6 megawatts”

news.com.com/Microsoft+vs.+Google+Whos+greener/2100-1022_3-6080297.html
“Microsoft made a big splash when it installed more than 2,000 solar panels across more than 30,000 square feet on top of its Mountain View, Calif., campus. The panels, believed to be part of the largest solar power system in Silicon Valley, generate 480 kilowatts of power at peak capacity”

Pre-requisite photos of leaders posing next to solar panels:
Applied Materials: us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/fi/10/90/31.jpg
Google: boingboing.net/images/sergeysolar.jpg
Microsoft: i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2006/4772_550×344.jpg
(nothing wrong with a little healthy competition!)

This weeks blog looks a lot like last weeks blog.

To proponents of fast EV batteries charge:

As James Anderson Merritt already explained the key obstacle is not related at all to the nature and capabilities of the batteries. The key limitation is relatively low power density of safe for general public electric energy transfer possible. Typical electric voltage in domestic grids is 110 V or 220 V. It is not SAFE for general public to introduce much higher voltages. Would it be not the case already 100 years ago higher voltages would be introduced by Nicola Tesla himself while building first electrical grids of U.S. From my physics lab experience I could tell that around approximately 1000 - 2000 V critically dangerous effect of surface breakdown discharge appears. The effect is that practical dielectric surface without much care is dirty enough that around indicated voltage range under normal room conditions small “lightning rods” start occasionally discharging from electrical power source contact into anything conductive (human body for example) happened around. It could be avoided by maintaining clean surfaces etc but it requires careful and educated behavior with electricity. From approximately 5000 V special elaborated precautions needed to prevent discharges along dielectric surfaces. All these is a source of very significant danger. This danger is way too high for routine energy dispensing. It could be compared to danger of using hydrazine (very poisonous rocket fuel) instead of gasoline for cars. Hydrazine is a very good burning fuel, high energy content, no carbon at all. If it burns properly it makes water and nitrogen - no CO2 pollution. But it would be absolutely insane even to think about allowing it for general public - many thousands would be killed each month by poisoning, explosions, extreme fires etc.

So we have to use say no more than ~500 V for available for general public far and wide charging stations. In this case for 50 kWh battery charge in 10 min it will require ~600 A. With 10 feet 4 AWG (0.2 inch diameter) copper wire this would make ~1 kWt power dissipate in such a wire. So such charging is not impossible but will require very special equipment. Building electrical wiring for such a charging station and making charging equipment would make it orders of magnitude more expensive than typical gas station. Key reason - you would have to do a lot of digging in many residential areas to make electric cabling of proper power density like around heavy industrial objects. So it hardly would be economical ever. Under comparable cost it could be built full scale electric railroad system over whole U.S.

David–

Your analysis of the cost of ownership of the Tesla misses the fact that the battery pack will not be useless after 100,000 miles. It will have reduced capacity and will probably not last more than a few years more, but a 100,000 mile Tesla will still be worth about the same and that 100,000 mile BMW, unless I miss my guess.

Other than that, the analysis of fuel and maintenance savings is very interesting.

# Anatoly Moskalev wrote on March 21st, 2007 at 5:24 pm
## It will be interesting to see the future development of (the blog) over next few weeks.

After many months of having everything I wrote end up getting posted, I finally had two posts get “moderated”. They were basically reposts of some rumors about a possible Tesla competitor. This was not much different from other things the moderators had previously let show up. This is a clue that perhaps the role of the blog is being re-evaluated right now.

The Tesla moderators have been gracious in having their forum “wide open” for all discussions, but perhaps there is some pressure to “reel it in” a bit?

I also know that Tesla was using key technical staff to manage the blog (at least for a while), so I wonder if those people needed to get back to their primary work on the vehicles?

I think there is a “for profit” (to be advertising supported) 3rd party discussion site about Tesla that has started up. If this blog runs out of steam, people may go over there and start a community not hosted by TeslaMotors itself.

—-

Editor’s Answer: The key technical staff are still here - just busier than before I have not moderated your posts, but a number of posts do get trapped in the spam filter if they fit a certain profile - usually posts with many links. There have been about 45K spam posts since we launched in July 2006. Moderation isn’t a perfect science and I zap the odd post by mistake.  

As far as Tesla’s silence in the blog for the past couple of weeks, I would be thinking that springtime is horrendously busy as they prepare for late summer or fall delivery of the first production Roadsters. It’s only going to get worse until those first few units roll off the assembly line and into customer driveways. On the other hand, they ought to be able to give us a snapshot status of final test results, and soon, they ought to be able to accommodate the press in actual production cars instead of carefully tweaked prototypes. Once they start doing that, we can perhaps assume that delivery-day is no more than six months in the future. So, if we haven’t seen any such indications before the end of June, Tesla may miss its announced target. I wonder if they’re making book in Vegas?

—-

Editor’s Comment: The next blog post is coming. It is a busy time

Info. on coal power plants from Mar. ‘06 National Geographic Magazine: 65% of China’s energy comes from coal-could more than double use in 20 yrs. In U.S., 50% of power comes from coal (9% from green energy). World burns 5 billion tons per yr.,U.S. burns more than 1 billion tons per yr., China 1.5 billion ( a coal train 1 1/2 miles long supplies only a day’s worth of fuel for a large power plant). Projected coal use per yr. by 2025: China= 3.2 billion tons, U.S.= 1.5 billion. Coal produces more co2 per energy unit than any other fossil fuel- 83% of U.S. power plant co2 emissions comes from coal.One of largest strip coal mines in W.Virgina covers 12,000 acres- “coal companies will take 300′ off the top of a mountain just to get a few feet of coal”.Soon China take the title of “the biggest global warming threat to the planet” from the U.S.- no doubt Sen. Inhofe of Oklahoma will do his best to keep the title right here-where it belongs (not).

On ABC Nightline show: story on native Alaskan village of Shishmaret north of Nome on coast. Winters are warmer & shorter, fall and spring come earlier, ice is thinner ,400′ of coastline has been eroded back in last few decades due to storm waves/tides not being stopped by ice sheet. Village has apparently been there for about 4000 yrs., now they are looking to move it inland. Village reps. are in D.C. lobbying for climate action. Their next stop should be Bejing, then on to India. Loss of arctic sea ice=less reflecting of solar energy and more absorbtion by ocean. Top 1/2 to 1 mile of ocean has warmed in recent years. Tundra in Alaska & Siberia said to be thawing-releasing methane, which said to be 21 times worse climate warming gas than co2. Villagers should have a new native word for those who doubt human caused global warming, one which translates to “halibutheads”.

The more I read up on Tesla and electric cars in general, the more I realize how inferior Internal combustion engines really are. I see commercials of brand new cars from BMW’s, Lexus, Ford, Toyota etc and I think to myself “Same 100 year old technology, dirty and inefficient, what the heck is that car company thinking building another junk ICE? ”

ICE vehicles, no matter how new, are like cassette players. Why buy one when you know Ipods are coming out very very soon (The Tesla)

Also here is a suggestion, You should make a list of the first 500 people who buy your Tesla. Post it on your website and maybe carve their names in a really nice marble plaque which will later stand at Tesla’s main headquarters. (Of course with the buyers consent) It would look like this

1. Elon Musk
2. Martin Eberhard
3. Anonymous
4. Chris Paine
5. Jay Leno

Etc.. all the way to 500

Would be really interesting to see who is helping to change the world and flip the automobile industry up side down

…and as EV battery systems increase in capacity, charging times will get longer not shorter.

To Eric:

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas OK but fortunately its concentration in the air is controlled mostly by air temperature. So all the extra exaust will condense into liquid water and rain back to ground or ocean surface in a natural cycle of water circling. So water vapor is not dangerous as emission as long as it is relatively pure water.

Stephan - Although it is possible that there will be a modicum of capacity remaining in the battery after 12 years, the place that I was a bit aggressive on my estimates was in the estimate that the battery would last 12 years to begin with. Li-Ion batteries lose capacity through 2 means: 1) usage - every time you charge and discharge the battery its capacity diminishes, and 2) Shelf life - every year the battery sits in the vehicle it loses capacity (especially if it is not stored perfectly i.e. at 40% capacity and 60 degrees F). Although the assumption is that Tesla has tweaked the charge and discharge characteristics to limit the effects on the battery, it would be near impossible to assume that the battery would last 12 years (BTW does anyone have a Li-Ion battery that has lasted more than 5 years that can share the experience?) Estimates of annual capacity drain under normal user conditions (100% charge storage and 77 degrees F) would be about 20% per year. If this estimate holds, the life of the Tesla battery would be (obviously) significantly less…

To Erich the Mad Bassist who wrote on March 21st. 2007 at 11:37am Somebody wake the president!

I believe the president of Tesla is now awake an in Brazil trying to hedge his bets by buying shares in low-cost sugar alcohol. I mean look
at the position he now finds himself in. G.M. has come out with a real winner the Chevy Volt that will undersell the WhiteStar by thousands of dollars and with a battery pack 1/3 the size. Further, it appears that carbon-foam batteries at 1/5 the cost can be used. Further, the rest of the car makers will not be far behind. If this happens then the market for LI ON batteries will fall like a rock and if he has share in these stock as I am sure he does he needs to cover his butt. G.M. was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat because they had learned from the EV1 that the next step was to convert electric cars to a series hybrid which they did by putting a small turbine in the trunk. Yes, it gave the EV1 a 400 mile range and they knew it would work. The mistake G.M. made was to stop the EV program as they could have had the Chevy Volt 10 years ago. Well, it looks to me like G.M. has made up for its mistake and is headed for world domination in EV sales. I believe that the only thing that will save Tesla is for them to start building a better “series hybrid” of higher quality ( lighter less than 3200 lbs), better handling, better performance and quieter. Futher, instead of using an intermal combustion engine to power a generator use a power pack made of zinc-air fuel cells to the recharge the batteries for a completely silent car and
one that people will pay more for.

# David wrote on March 22nd, 2007 at 11:05 am
## BTW does anyone have a Li-Ion battery that has lasted more than 5 years that can share the experience?

The 11 year old Li-Ion camcorder battery on an old Sony Hi-8 camcorder I have is still working fine. It has spent most of its life on the shelf, and probably been recharged only about 50 times total.

I have a Cannon S100 digital camera which Li-Ion failed after only 2 years. I guess it can vary greatly from cell to cell.

# kert wrote on March 22nd, 2007 at 6:05 am
# …if you look around, you can see that these {fast-charge} limitations can be safely overcome with relatively
# modest development investment. Your to obvious options are:
# 1) partner with TEPCO, get fat lines and beefy chargers in specialized charging stations as is done
# my Mitsubishi MIEV and Subaru R1E projects
# 2) get a separate set of energy storage units that slow-charges from the grid, but is capable to dump it
# to your car batteries at high speed.
# As the storage is stationary, stuff like cheap lead acid, or flywheels for example fit the bill.

OK. When you actually see a car of the Roadster’s class fast-charged in under 20 minutes by any of the methods you mentioned — or any other for that matter — you let us know, and tell us how safe and inexpensive it is. It’s easy to spin scenarios all day long, and big companies have made exciting announcements before, on which they failed to deliver, at least in part. It’s very hard to make high-energy electricity safe for the average person. Not impossible, mind you, but hard and expensive: look at the cost and complexity of the ESS itself, for example. It’s also not not ethical to sell a “feature” that hasn’t even been demonstrated via a full-scale prototype, not that this doesn’t happen every day, even when “reputable” companies are involved. There are some things you can leave up to faith and reasonable expectations of future progress. And there are other things you should see demonstrated, in person, before you plunk your money down. I believe that fast-charging falls in the latter category. Let’s see what happens.

Anyone see the ZAP-X ? Seems like a cheaper “better” knock off of Tesla roadster

To Anatoly:

Thanks for the response. I only hope the analysis is correct, before 200,000,000 tailpipes start spewing water vapor. What if the vapor isn’t entirely clean for example? As your response suggests, that might have an adverse effect, causing the particles to remain suspended in the air.

To David:

While my comment may seem “cute” this type of analysis should be carefully considered. Humidifiers certainly keep the air humid in a building without much difficulty. If there’s so many vehicles outputting vapor, can we be certain that it will instantly condense, or would it instead act like a giant distributed humidifier? The concerns might seem laughable, but keep in mind: Cars drive enough miles annually to make 10 million trips to the moon. That’s a lot of water vapor if they all run on hydrogen.

# Alastair wrote on March 22nd, 2007 at 3:09 pm
## Anyone see the ZAP-X ? Seems like a cheaper “better” knock off of Tesla roadster

Why is it a knock-off of the roadster? It is more SUV like.
www.autoblog.com/2007/03/19/zap-releases-sketch-of-zap-x-super-ev-suv/

# David wrote on March 22nd, 2007 at 3:18 pm
## ..let me find the solution to the entire Global Warming problem…
## Water vapor accounts for almost 98% of greenhouse gas.
## Which brings the simplest of ideas… cover the ocean!

Yikes. What happens to all the plant life, algae, plankton and other things that are depending on the sunlight. Sounds like we might trade one problem for another.

# Malcolm Powel wrote “Tesla Roadster Progress - From EP to VP”
Thanks for another great blog. Great to see you reaching another major milestone.
Is that a “tow hook” I now see in the middle of the validation prototype?
Do you have a front license plate holder design in mind?

Also, what will the fate be for the remaining Engineering Prototypes and leftover Validation Prototypes once you go into production. I imagine that there are regulations that restrict what you can do with them. Do you send them to museums, cannibalize them for parts, or what? You could probably sell them in some other country even if they didn’t remain street legal here.

To Malcolm Wilson who wrote on March 22nd, 2007 Ron please explain why the Chevy Volt is a “real winner”. Yes, I read Mr. Eberhard
article and I must say that I think his vision of what an electric vehicle should be is short sighted. Here is why. Pure electric vehicles
already limited range will be reduced by as much as 50% when used in cold-weather states. Now does he plan to only sell these
cars in warm weather states. This means that the Tesla would only have a range of a 125 miles in cold weather not much better than the EV1 which was not viable for sale in the entire U.S.

The Chev Volt is the next generation of electric vehicles after the EV1 and solves the pure electric’s short range problem in cold weather
by building the car around a generator to extend it’s range. The Volt in my mind is not really a hybrid because the ICE is used to run the generator and is not connected to the drive line. The ICE is only used to power the generator thus what you have is still a pure electric car with means of extending it’s range. Further, this motor is a 1 Liter turbo charged engine that runs at 1800rpm and can fast charge the batteries in a very short time.

The advantage of the volt is that it’s performace will not diminish no matter how cold it gets or how steep or long a hill it climbs and it can go across the U.S. right now. For People going to work 40 miles or less they will get 155 miles per gallon. When the generator is used it still gets 50 miles per gallon, a small price to pay rather than being stranded in the middle of nowhere. On top of this there is room for improvement because as technolgy improves so will the Volt because various types of generators can be used to charge the batteries. For example, when better fuel cells such as the zinc-air fuel cell are available it will be able to silently recharge the batteries with no noise or vibration. To top it all off the Volt’s battery pack weighs only 400 lbs and is going to cost you a lot less for the batteries which are a hugh expense for the Tesla.

People are going to buy this car as it is the first practicle EV that I have seen at a resonable price. In addition, the Chevy Volt will free you from having to plan you day and your life in advance around recharging your battery. If your battery did not get recharged overnight so what it will just do the job while you are driving to work.

Excuse my intrusion into the middle of your debate Ronald & Malcom. Aren’t you both correct to some degree? Series hybrids (despite GM’s semantics, the Volt is one) would fill a market need just as much as current and developing EV’s fill different market needs. For the single person that doesn’t have a house and a plug, EV’s are not an option today. Perhaps they will be someday when plug’s are more readily available at work and in public places But, even then, range will need to improve for them to be practical for the person that takes more than the very occasional long drive. That said, two-car families with available plugs at home can certainly use the EV’s being developed today.

Economics may extend the usefulness and available market for the hybrid (series und parallel). Series hybrids are a much better alternative to parallel as far as development goes, since they have an electric drive train and are better suited for plugging in. I still don’t understand the argument that the battery pack for series hybrids (like the Volt) need to last as long as Tesla’s or 6 years or 8 years or any specific time frame. What does it matter if the useful life of the battery lasts 2-3 years like conventional car batteries, as long as the economics work? As long as batteries keep improving and their relative cost keeps coming down, it will be cheaper to buy 4 12KWh batteries (one every 2-3 years) rather than one 48 KWh battery today. Yes, the hybrids have a more complex power train than EU’s, but the constant RPM motor could be a much simpler ICE than the one’s powering today’s vehicles. There is another complicating element, however. Since it is a genset, there is a second electric motor to deal with.

Is GM really committed to the Volt? They certainly say they are, but look at their actions. They had nothing to show at their announcement that was specific to the Volt’s drive train. All of that is only on paper. What it appears they showed was a concept vehicle for the hydrogen propulsion system they’ve been developing and hastily morphed it into the Volt with Eflex. Given that fitting the technology into a Chevy price tag is their biggest obstacle, wouldn’t it have made more sense for it to be announced as the Caddy Volt if they were truly committed to building it? I hope I’m wrong and GM does produce them in volume. The concept is good and depending on costs and performance I might buy one rather than an EV 2 years from now.

::The advantage of the volt is that it’s performace will not diminish no matter how cold it gets or how steep or long a hill it climbs and it can go across the U.S. right now.

Huh, last i heard, the Volt could barely roll on and off the showroom stage, powered by a small lead-acid batt hooked to a DC motor. Going across the U.S. with this is going to be as difficult as it was for Archimedes to lift the earth ( he actually didnt quite calculate the distance he had to move .. )

# TEG wrote on April 24th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
## How about this one? :
## www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/tesla200705

I like the way it is written, but it does have some technical errors.

For instance:

“He wanted to electrify a _Nissan_ economy car called the Scion.” (Scion is not a Nissan…)
“Finding backers on Silicon Valley’s fabled Sand _Lot_ Road was another matter.” (Sand Hill Road…)
…etc…

People’s perception is allotted with a lot of ignorance. Reporters as this blog has mentioned do not understand the realities of business models and goals as a sustaining independent company. EV1 failed in part because it opposes GM’s rest of the fleet and because GM uses a modified version of Ford’s mass production process. There is so much money wasted. I just hope Tesla is incorporating a full-fledged lean production. Lean production will get you far fast and in a stable way. GREAT POST!! The people you are selling to need to wake up as I see in the comments written here. Just because you will be selling to people doesn’t mean that you can’t expect them to do a little studying of the product they are going to buy and that includes reporters. A reporter that reports on wrong information isn’t doing their job or anyone any good, let alone unjustly putting Tesla in the wrong light of its vision.

If the loading time of the batteries is the only problem…..then Tesla will bring heaven on earth. I don’t need more than even 100 miles a day so I can charge ‘her’ every night. This is the future. Hydrogen cars are much too expensive and hydrogen is too difficult, expensive and dangerous to produce, transport and filling up.
Maintenance of a Tesla is half of a hydro-car. Just tires, brake pads and shock absorbers, that’s all.
If they’re on NYSE or Nasdaq I will certainly buy their stocks.

They replied my mail ; 2009 available here in Belgium (Europe). And I can assure you all : we think ‘green’ !

Dirk