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So there it was. With a strange sense of accomplishment, I took it all in. The silver Roadster’s windshield was smashed, spider web cracks fanning out in all directions from under the mono-wiper. Along the driver’s side of the car, from nose to tail, the paint had been scraped away by what only could only have been severe contact with a concrete barrier. Checking out the passenger’s side, the damage was just as bad.
Smiling, I responded, “this is great!” and took a moment to reflect on how we got to this point. For those expecting a crash test blog entry outlining the rigors of safety certification, I’m sorry to disappoint. The same can be said for those hoping to read of a track testing catastrophe.
No, the damage I was surveying on the 2008 Tesla Roadster was entirely the doing of a team of designers and programmers manipulating pixels and polygons in the wee hours of the night in Liverpool, UK. The devastation was complete. The end result, entirely impressive.
The Tesla Roadster takes some scrapes in PGR4
For those wondering how a prototype vehicle that has never been put through its paces by the car magazines, let alone handed off to customers, ends up in a videogame: In many ways the process is every bit as interesting of a logistics and product development challenge as building the car itself.
Once the decision had been made to support Microsoft Game Studios with the opportunity to include the Tesla Roadster in Project Gotham Racing 4 (for the Xbox), what can only be described as a small army of creative folks from all disciplines – including sound engineering, programming, CAD modeling and design – all teamed up to make the vision a reality.
We began with the car itself. It was important that the car look, sound, and drive like the real deal. Now long past the days of Pole Position and Spy Hunter, current arcade style driving games are equal parts simulator and amusement park ride, blurring the line between duplicating the actual sensory experience of racing a car and the over-the-top Hollywood style crashes and collisions. In short, whether skewed more towards the entertainment side of the equation, or towards a simulator experience, today’s crop of videogames are powered by logic engines that can manipulate enough data to make your old Atari or Colecovision seem like a Model T compared to an … ummm… Tesla Roadster.
The Look
We removed the door to get a better interior shot
In order to have the Roadster look as realistic as possible, Microsoft Games Studios asked for all of the CAD drawings and schematics that could be dropped directly into their modeling program to begin generating the gaming model of the car. There was just one problem – there was no way we would turn over working files on a car yet to be built. The risk to Tesla Motors of a leak was simply too high. There was, fortunately, a work-around: photography. Hours and hours of photography.
In order to build the most accurate models of the car, we were able to work with one of the more recent prototypes, specifically Validation Prototype 1 (or VP1, the dark green car,) and to book time in a high-end studio where every last detail of the car could be photographed and eventually drawn for the game. Because the Roadster is an open-top car, it was important that every last nuance, texture, and surface on both the car’s exterior and interior be captured as accurately as possible. No stitch in the upholstery nor lug bolt on the wheel was too insignificant to escape the photographer’s lens. Every detail was captured and a shoot that began early one Saturday morning stretched through the weekend into Monday morning (when our own engineers needed the car back for actual development work).
The timing was tight, but with the photos uploading to an FTP site, scheduling began on getting the sound right.
The Sound
Although commonly reported as completely silent, the Roadster actually has a cool, Blade Runner-like whir at speed. Equal parts AC motor rotor assembly and gearbox whine, the sound of the Roadster is far more complex and full of character than the mere thrum of tires on the pavement and whistle of wind rushing around the seams of the body.
However, duplicating this sound for the game would prove to be an interesting challenge. Having previously worked with sound engineers on incorporating my personal car (an MR2 Turbo) in Need for Speed Carbon, I knew from experience that one way to capture sounds on a moving car is to mount microphones covered in a furry material (designed to minimize wind noise) near the exhaust and the engine and then hit the road. The sounds are recorded to a hard drive on board the car, and, by placing boom mikes on the stretch of road on which the car would be driving, the engineers can match the sounds as heard both from the source as well as on the road.
The Tesla Roadster wired for sound
With the MR2, the result is an impressive collection of sucking noises from the air intake doing its best impression of a vacuum cleaner, the fan-like spooling of the turbo, the roar of the exhaust, and the periodic venting of excess boost pressure in a loud “pshhhhhhh” sound from the blow-off valve. Add in a bit of valve train noise and the occasional loud scream of a wastegate dumping even more boost pressure, and the mechanical symphony begins to take shape with each component being captured to its own channel and mapped at every point in the car’s power curve. The combination of these, once stitched together in a sound studio, is no less complex than recording the vocals, bass, drum, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and synthesizer in a studio. Each track is married to the next until everything is perfectly in synch and all the sound levels can be adjusted and optimized.
By contrast, the Roadster is no less interesting but a lot more subtle and elusive in the recording process. Putting aside the fact that there are no traditional mechanical components to assign to dedicated microphones, the challenge becomes fighting background noise (wind, tire, and ambient noise) to accurately capture the sound of our electric sports car. One solution would have been to use Tesla Motors’ own motor dyno room, a facility in which the motors are bench-tested under load conditions, to capture the Roadster’s true sound without having to worry about all of the external noise associated with a moving car going down the road at speed. However, this idea was a no-go in that it required not only a spinning motor, but also accurately matching gear ratios to simulate that motor under the same loads that it sees when installed in the Roadster.
Cruising in the Tesla Roadster
The next idea was to use a traditional dynamometer, used to measure horsepower at the wheels, by strapping the car to a giant steel roller and then dialing in the resistance to the roller to simulate the load conditions the Roadster would actually see going down the road. This was better, but still posed problems. The sound of the roller itself (and the car’s tires on the roller) could be enough to drown out the characteristic Blade-Runner sound as the motor revs and speeds climb.
That left one final option, which proved to be the most likely to yield the results we were after. The idea was to use a hub-mounted dyno while removing the wheels and tires from the car so that the load was placed directly on the hub assemblies. With the noise of the traditional steel drum and tires gone, and no wind noise to worry about, we would have what we needed to isolate the sounds we were after. We found a local resource to provide us with the facilities we needed (thanks to WORKS, a high-performance Mitsubishi tuning outfit in San Rafael, California). Late one night, after the prying eyes of customers had left, we snuck the Roadster into WORKS’ dyno room. Once there, we discovered how well this set-up works. While most cars need a large evacuation fan and tubing system to send the potentially lethal exhaust fumes out of the building, with the Roadster we could drive the car to its limit in an enclosed room, without worrying about the noise, carbon monoxide poisoning, or the open bay door that would give prying eyes a peek at what we were up to inside.
The Performance
A perfect rendering
With the designers copiously matching the details of photographs to every dimension publicly disclosed on the Roadster, and the sound engineers busily mapping out the Roadster’s sounds in 1,000 rpm increments, the next component was matching the performance of the car in the game to the real deal. Here, my role was much less hands-on in that all we really had to do was provide the power delivery curve of the Roadster, as expressed in a dyno-graph (which, handily enough we were able to provide not only from Tesla’s engineering team, but also from our recording sessions at WORKS), and the gaming engine would do the rest, seamlessly mapping out the sound and acceleration to the actual torque delivery of the Roadster. After years of development across now four installments of the Project Gotham Racing franchise, we are confident that the folks over at Microsoft Game Studios have a game engine capable of delivering the goods.
And Then We Wreck It
So what of the carnage I mentioned earlier? Like many games in the arcade-genre, PGR4 gives the gratification (or devastation, depending on your perspective) of war-wounds from racing. Each car is allocated a number of polygons (represented in terms of data points in the game) and a crash engine computes the crushing and distress of these polygons from impact events in the game (for example, hitting another racer or a fixed barrier). While the Roadster’s carbon fiber bodywork may not accurately reflect the same type of damage as, for example, the crushing of sheet metal, many of the areas of distress were direct carry-overs, like the shattering of glass and scraping of paint. Further, since the game designers knew where body parts like the rear clamshell were hinged, they could design fenders and other body components to deform on impact just as they would on the car itself.
It’s really gratifying to see the end result fully rendered, including the impressive ability to reflect sun, shade, the clouds above, and rain. Check it out for yourself at Microsoft’s website – or on your own Xbox. The game went on sale this week!
Dangit, now I’ve got to buy an XBOX 360.
Meanwhile… is the Roadster a vehicle you can start with, or do you unlock it after many trials and much frustration?
I have to say that this is probably the best blog post so far! As a gaming enthusiast and as a car fanatic, I love to hear about how games can get closer and closer to reality while still maintaining the fun-factor of driving the Roadster. Maybe you could have your pre-sale buyers try the PGR 4 simulation and then the actual car, and post their reactions between the two.
Keep up the great work guys!
Congrats on another accomplishment. It is great to see that you have the Roadster show up in such an appropriate virtual locale.
Darn that it had to be on Xbox. As a PS3 owner, I had hoped to see it in Grand Turismo HD, but it looks like Microsoft gets the prize in this installment of the MS vs Sony battle for domination.
As a former game designer it continues to astound me how much of a large scale team effort goes into modern games. The realism is amazing.
# DavidV wrote:
## we were able to work with one of the more recent prototypes, specifically Validation Prototype 9 (or VP9, the dark green car,)
VP9=Dark Green? I thought VP9 was “Electric Blue”, and VP1 was the Dark Green car… hmm….
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Editor’s Answer: Thanks TEG2! You are correct. I have fixed the text.
Super minor nitpick, but it seems like the lip of the wheel (where it touches the tire) catches too much reflection in PGR4.
The screen shots look so realistic, but I can tell right away it isn’t a real Roadster from the way the wheels look a tad wrong…
Is the real tire a hair wider than the modeled tire? Is the modeled aluminum more reflective in the game than in real life?
Thanks for that incredible narrative. I interviewed at a well-known game company in Southern California in the 1990s, but turned down their offer for another job that was closer to the place where my wife and I wanted to make our home. While I was touring the facility, I saw many of the types of activities you described (but of course, being done more primitively with the technology and methods of the day). It is fascinating to hear how sophisticated game production has become in the intervening decade. Had I taken the game job, I might be able to afford a Roadster today, instead of having to content myself with an incredible simulation of one via Xbox. But as you describe it (and from the rendering sample you provided), “incredible” is indeed the word.
Good review of the game over at 1up.com (www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3163370). Even some good words about the Tesla Roadster:
“Take the head-to-head challenge of the ultramodern Tesla Roadster versus the iconic Ferrari Testarossa, for example. If you thought that an electric sports car would be eaten and spat out again by Sonny Crockett’s favorite big hunk of ’80s exotica, then you’d be sorely mistaken. The insane acceleration of the near-silent car (it sounds a bit like a hair dryer, no joke) proved strangely alluring for the remainder of the career mode, despite the fact that there were better cars in its class.”
James - I wish I could confirm your hopes about that job move; but the sad truth is that on average the games industry pays worse than the market average (things like business software & services). There are a small number of people who have gotten fabulously wealthy with the industry; but like anything, they’re the exception not the rule. 95% of all game products lose money - only the top 5% break even or make a profit. Its a high-stakes system that’s evolved towards the movie-making business model.
Its a cool line of work - I spent a few years at Sierra Software on some notable titles, as well as other game companies like WizKids and Pokemon USA… But there’s a famous quote about the games industry that sums it up rather nicely: “It can be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding jobs to have, but NEVER sign more than a six-month lease!”
Take care,
–Noel
(Who finally has a compelling reason to buy an XBox 360…)
In terms of accident realism - what speed is the ESS crash-tested to?
I’ve done some pretty spectacular crashes in video games, and I wonder what will happen if I manage to pull a Stefan Eriksson, and make the mid-back end of the Roadster hit a telephone pole sideways at 130mph. Will the ESS still control the batteries if it’s been completely smashed?
I’ve been playing the game for a while now, so I’ll lay down how the Tesla Roadster fits in
It’s not available at the start of the game. You must play in the game’s career mode for a while. Eventually, you’ll be presented with an “Invitational Event” called the “Electric vs. Petrol Challenge”. You drive the Tesla Roadster against a 1980’s-era Ferrari Testarossa (it’s not a fair fight
). Once you win, the Tesla Roadster is unlocked and can be used in all the game’s modes.*
It’s really creepy to drive… you’re required to race petrol cars to get at the Tesla, so suddenly not hearing anything when you hit the accelerator is a bizarre experience. You can’t hear it at all from external cameras, but from hood mounted or internal views you can just barely hear the Blade Runner-like sound of the engine.
The game version of the Tesla performs at the earlier specifications (0 to 60 in 4 seconds, 130 MPH top speed, 13500 red line). The relatively low top speed puts it at a disadvantage in tracks with a lot of long straights. But… the Tesla’s solid handling and outstanding acceleration mean it can hold its own on the twisty ones
So yeah, like the 1up review says, the Tesla Roadster isn’t the best in its class, but you’ll still be drawn to it because it’s so unique 
-Ryan
* As an Invitational Event, nearly all PGR4 players are going to try it out… for most, this will be the first time they hear about Tesla Motors. Huge exposure
I prefer space invaders & pong, or maybe pac man-though it’s a little elaborate.
I want a video race game where you can drive certain politcians (and celebrities) off of 300′ cliffs and into brick walls at 220 mph-and etc. Go ahead, make my day and steal the idea game geeks (or is there already such a culturally significant and educational game ?).
Thanks for the great write up! As someone who has been involved these past few years in creating online games (not at the size or caliber of PGR4), I found your recount of the process fascinating. That said, I agree with Noel’s remark; that quote is BRILLIANT! So very true. The ups can be great (seeing people experience your product brings an amazing sense of satisfaction), but the lows can be terrible (6 months slugging it out painfully, depressed with work, not caring about the product etc). I’m happier floating around as a freelance developer now, rather than being tied down to games!
Looking forward to giving the Roadster a spin in PGR4!
Thanks David
It is amazing to see a brand new EV getting such significant exposure in a driving game. Glad that you were able to make the time and the resources available for this in your hectic schedules. Now all of the armchair critics and boy racers can put the car head to head with whichever gas-burner they fancy.
Another great example of Tesla’s Left-field approach to auto marketing and new customer interaction.
But then with hindsight, Video Games and Silicon Valley Engineers are an obvious combination.
Now all you need is to get a Tesla into a Hollywood car chase, performing a stunt which only a BEV could accomplish
The opening sequence in the next Bond movie, perhaps? Hilarious to watch the invisible Jaguar in “Die Another Day” driving around making no noise.
Mind you, I bet they wreck a lot of cars in practice.
To AES:
The top right photo in this blog with the scraped up paint and cracked windshield represents the extent of damage modeling in PGR4. You can crash head on at 120MPH into a concrete barrier without hurting the car (or the driver) at all.
Terrible news!
Here we get the Tesla Roadster into a game (awesome!!!) only to have it be an XBox only game. Anybody have an XBox emulator for a PC? I think I’m gonna cry.
Oh, and T.J. on that game for smashing politician, take a look at “Flat Out” and “Flat Out 2″. Ok, maybe it isn’t a politician, per se, but you can always imagine that the driver of the car that you just hurled through that front windshield to hit that target or knock down those bowling pins is a politician if you like.
The quickest way to test drive the Tesla Roadster in PGR4 is to go to Single Player and choose Time Attack. There you can choose any car including the Tesla.
For those frustrated that PGR4 is an XBox 360 exclusive, it’s worth mentioning that Bizarre Creations, the maker of PGR4, recently has been acquired by Activision, and thus no longer uses Microsoft as their publisher. This paves the way for them to release their games on other platforms. This also raises the possibility that the Tesla Roadster will appear in other Activision games, since they can re-use all the assets created for PGR4.
Ryan Lamansky / Kardax ,
Great tip. Here’s hoping we see the Tesla Roadster on a PC format game in the near future, then! C’mon Activision, you know us PC gamers want it.
Hello here.
It’s amazing what world is getting built around the Tesla Roadster, I am so glad about that. More word is spread around is better!
I have a question though: does Tesla plan to be present at the LA Auto Show in November? I had a look through the Exhibitor List on the official LA Auto Show website and I couldn’t find it… any idea?!! I hope you will not miss it!
Thank you again and keep up the great work.
Best,
Malcolm-the Tesla based movie in question would be “The Italian Job II”-the first being Mini Cooper driven.
On further thought, I can see it now, J.B. : in the first Italian Job the superior agilty & smallness of the Mini were of dramatic cinematic value. With the Tesla the superior acceleration & stealth quietness could be appropriately used. For example imagine (J.B.) a dark , old european street scene-the bad guy in question getting out of his car (a Trabant perhaps) and looking down side alleys in search of a Tesla that disappeared into the night . As he turns to look down a side street, the Tesla quietly emerges from an adjacent narrow alley and slowly, silently drives right by him, unnoticed, no more than 3′ away, headed for two more bad guys down the road- both looking the other way down the road. Then the Tesla accelerates( silently again, but of course) and FOOOOM ! - it zooms down the road right between them-missing each by inches. Get the producers on the horn J.B.-and Kiefer Sutherland & throw in Will Smith, Cruise ,Hugh Grant and Pierce Brosnan while you’re at it-and somewhere in the movie homage must be paid to the car chase scene with David Niven and Robert Wagner near the end of the original “Pink Panther”-a classic scene worthy of reprise- this time featuring Brosnan & Grant. Why it’ll be a sure-fire smash hit, J.B. -exactly like the end of that chase scene! -And that’s not all, J.B.-imagine this: a digitally generated 100%, totally lifelike recreation of Boogie in a significant role-as “the old sage master” perhaps-yes, yes-that’s it: I can see it now-Academy Awards all around, especially for the first lifelike recreation of a Hollywood legend-returning unexpectedly as if by magic (Industrial Light & Magic perhaps ) to the silver screen yet again-and driving, what else: a Thunder Gray (suitable Film Noir coloration ) Tesla Roadster.
Ooops. It wasn’t a Jaguar it was an Aston Martin.
One of the cool features of the game is you can take your own pictures. Here’s one I took this morning: images.kardax.com/Photos/PGR4/PGR4-Tesla-Vegas.jpg
This is great news.
Now we want the Hot Wheels Tesla Roadster, the Jadi or other die cast display model Roadster and the 12th scale RC racer (at near-scale speeds
# vfx wrote on October 6th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
## Now we want the Hot Wheels Tesla Roadster
I am hoping for a 1:18 larger sized model.
Like something from Maisto.
www.sportcraftcars.com/maisto.html
I’m only interested in the RC version if it contains an actual AC induction motor like the real thing. And at least put the LiIon battery cells in a mini ESS “cartridge.” Verisimilitude is what we neeed!
Another off topic post
money.cnn.com/2007/10/04/autos/electric_wright.fortune/?postversion=2007100510
An electric car that is planned to do 0 - 60 in 2 seconds. That just plain psychotic.
“TEGster wrote:
Like something from Maisto.”
Yeah ,or JADI like this Elise
www.ashevillediecast.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=22693&category_id=477
flabby wrote: Another off topic post: An electric car that is planned to do 0 - 60 in 2 seconds. That just plain psychotic.
My goodness flabby, 0 - 60 in under 4 is psychotic allready
, in 2s I think fairly suicidal neck wrenching stuff.
Lets shift gears. Take a look at this, fast charge sceptics:
www.greencarcongress.com/2007/10/lithium-ion-ele.html
“A Micro-Vett Fiat Doblò, a regular size 5-seat station wagon vehicle, powered by a custom 18kWh Altairnano lithium-ion NanoSafe battery pack, traveled 300 kilometers (186 miles) in one day in an urban delivery circuit”
While AltairNano may or not become viable battery option, there are other chemistries apart from lithium titanate, like lithium iron phosphate that can cope with fast charge rates.
And, before anyone jumps in and says that household circuits wont be able to supply the required power: well they don’t need to. If the battery becomes cheap enough so you can hold a slow-charged stationary spare pack at the basement, you can fast-charge from there. And there will be commercial fast charge stations, also very likely smoothening the load with stationary storage, like flywheels or something.
Gas stations dont call a gas truck either each time when you pull up to refill, they have storage tanks.
kert wrote, “If the battery becomes cheap enough so you can hold a slow-charged stationary spare pack at the basement…”
“Cheap enough” means a good balance between replacement price and battery life. This is especially important for “fast charge stations,” which will use their buffer batteries much more quickly than you or I would use the spare battery in the basement. Gas stations have storage tanks, indeed, but the replacement of a storage tank is a big deal. At a busy station, would the buffer batteries need to be replaced every month, year, week? This again argues for standardized, replaceable large battery modules — and if you have such modules, why not simply design cars to use them directly, and follow the “deposit/return” model that has worked so well for Propane tanks?
I agree, that as a video game and car enthusiast, this was one heck of an awesome blog entry. Fascinating stuff - keep it up!
What a lot of work! Try to maximize your return on your time by getting into some other games. Specifically, Gran Turismo HD. That game franchise has done a LOT to actually either create markets for cars (or convince companies that there are markets for their cars). This is a nice summary of the “power” of GT:
Although, my PS3 uses 230W! That’s 10x what the PS2 used).
blog.wired.com/cars/2007/07/did-gran-turism.html
Either way, I know I pre-ordered one of the first WRX’s imported into the country just from playing it on that game (there were none in the US at that time to actually try). Granted, I did test drive it before actually > buying < it, but I had put a deposit on it.
And, hey, you don’t want to limit yourselves to targeting only the “budget-conscious” Xbox 360 crowd. The roadster is for people who ought to be able to afford a PS3!
Plus, the PS3 will use almost as much electricity in operation as the roadster, so it’s a more realistic simulation (Just kidding.
“At a busy station, would the buffer batteries need to be replaced every month, year, week? ”
How about: never.
Look up flywheels. They basically dont wear out and need almost no maintenance.
They are unsuitable for use in vehicles because even though they have perfect power density, and can get pretty good energy densities with modern rotor materials, the rotational inertia will screw up vehicle handling abysmally. But they are perfect for grid balancing and are actually deployed for that very purpose in relatively large quantities already.
Question for Tesla Central: what’s happening in the Whitestar world ? -inquiring mallards want to know.
kert wrote:
# [Merritt] “At a busy station, would the buffer batteries need to be replaced every month, year, week? ”
# How about: never.
# Look up flywheels. They basically dont wear out and need almost no maintenance.
If you’re not going to let people talk about all the problems of quick-charging, I won’t let you talk about flywheels.
Look, if you have flywheels, you still need generation equipment, power cabling and couplings, etc. Basically, you need a complete infrastructure architecture to support a “service” that will become less necessary as successive generations of batteries acquire additional capacity. That sounds like a losing proposition. Do you think that the gasoline industry would have put in thousands of storage tanks and special pumps across the continent, much less bothered to improve pump, nozzle, or storage technology over the years, to serve customers for only a decade or two? Remember that word “cheap” that was bandied about above? This isn’t cheap.
What is cheap (on several levels, including taking care of the vehicle battery), is to charge from the wall gradually, or to physically swap already-charged modules for depleted ones. That’s how I expect things to go as the EV population reaches “critical mass.”
I see a very limited role for quick-charge stations: as “emergency stops” for hapless, long-haul travelers or commercial vehicles. The “juice” will probably be much more expensive than one can get from the outlet at home, but people will pay for the convenience of not being stranded. I don’t see thousands of these particular roadside “flowers” blooming, though. If you do, best put the business plan together now and get in on the action.
# rxtx wrote on October 9th, 2007 at 8:49 am
## flabby wrote: Another off topic post: An electric car that is planned to
## do 0 - 60 in 2 seconds. That just plain psychotic.
## My goodness flabby, 0 - 60 in under 4 is psychotic allready
,
## in 2s I think fairly suicidal neck wrenching stuff.
Suicidal right. 0-60 in two seconds is like, what, two g:s? You’d better have good neck support in that car.
I don’t think that is realistic, because in real life you would just get burned rubber for a result of trying to accelerate that fast. No street-useful tires can keep grip in that kind of accelerations. You can get it in this engine-with-four-wheels type car with dry pavement and tires that are made for racing. That is almost like F1 car.
Back to the point: Too bad it has to be XBox. I was planning on purchasing PS3, but now I can’t choose. This game aside, is there any reason to buy XBox?
Good call on not giving up the technical plans of the Death Star… I mean Whitestar… um.. I mean Roadster.
You don’t want Microsoft to get a monopoly on electric cars too.
Um, you are saying like Intel should not have developed processes and infrastructure for 65 nanometer chip fabrication and sold gazillions of them, while making good money in the process, because 45-nanometer tech was bound to come along a few years later anyway ?
Thats … not really how business plans are made.
Tesla should put a sticker on the inside of the recharging door that says “Intel Inside”
60miles/hour in 4 secs:
convert to meters/hour
1 mile = 1,609 meters
and
convert to miles/sec
3600 secs = 1 hours
(60*1609)/3600 = 26.82
26.82meters/sec in 4 sec:
divide by 4 to get acceleration
6.705meters/sec2
g=9.8 meters/sec2
so 0-60 in 4 sec = 0.68g
then 0-60 in 2 sec = 13.41meters/sec2
0-60 in 2 sec = 1.37g
Not psycotic, Dragsters can pull about 2g
The question is will Tesla ever make a car with that kind of power to weight ratio? Probably not.
And of course, the contact surface of the tires would need to be HUGE. Like a dragster.
Joe G: If Tesla is successful, it’s reasonable to think that they’ll start looking at various types of racing in the future. For now, there’s already at least one electric drag racer out there ( see www.killacycle.com , video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GKwHDQnK44 ) that does the quarter mile in just over 8 seconds.
# Joe G wrote on October 10th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
## 0-60 in 2 sec = 1.37g
## Not psycotic, Dragsters can pull about 2g
Well, dragsters are quite psychotic, and do that in straight line. This kind of acceleration in road car is dangerous if the driver isn’t a good one. Like that link article said “don’t accelerate when cornering, you end up wrapped around telephone pole” -kind of acceleration. One touch in accelerator and you switch from car to aeroplane. Which is bad if you don’t have wings
.
1.37 is enough for need of good neck support. Your head weight about 5 kilos, so 5kg down, 6.85kg backwards. Try to lay in your back in bed keeping your head outside of that bed. Then think about that this is worse, even that each individual acceleration is short, you will end up with severe neck pain without decent support. You might even be able to injure yourself by first accelerating at max and then just breaking as hard you can. From positive ~7kg to negative 10+ in a split of a second. That is like hitting something pretty hard. That’s psychotic.
# Ryan Lamansky / Kardax wrote on October 11th, 2007 at 9:50 am
## Joe G: If Tesla is successful, it’s reasonable to think that they’ll start
## looking at various types of racing in the future.
Since I first heard about this company in every time I see a safety-car in F1 races I have been thinking that it should be Tesla Roadster with hardtop
. Even that F1 safety car isn’t quite normal road car (modified Mercedes-Benz CLK 63 AMG with 354 kW V8) Tesla roadster with it’s huge acceleration should be able to do quite similar job….or not. Just found this :”The top speed I can reach, on Silverstone’s long straight for example, is 155mph - but it looks like 60mph compared to the F1 cars,”. 155mph is quite a bit faster than what Tesla Roadster can do.
Question to Tesla team: _IF_ you would be doing a race-version of the Roadster as a safety car how fast could you make it go? As a quideline it should be able to stay on road for 100km or 62miles which is about 20 laps of typical F1 race circuit. That should reduce battery pack weight quite a lot. Other than that I can’t say what could be done for it.
Hi…
I’m from Portugal.
When Tesla came to Europe?
So happy to see it all coming together and so well. Having owned two Lotuses in the “old” days (1st Twincam Europa for the US, and an Esprit) I do feel somewhat of an
akinship to the project. Two important questions that don’t seem to be addressed anywhere. I used to live in Santa Cruz and I know that it gets cold….nobody has said how the heat works in this car and what happens to the range when you really do need heat . I now live in Vancouver, Canada…are there plans that the car will be exported out of the US and is it designed to meet Canadian and European specs? I tried to import the US model Lotus Elise and it cannot be brought into Canada.
Thank you,
Barry
Hello Barry,
As I come from Europe I of corse ask myself the same questions, but unfortunately the answer always was that there are no plans right now to export the Tesla Roadster right now. One thing being the legal requierements for the countries. the other thing is the maintenance. Therefore you’ll have to pay more for the Tesla Roadster if you live far away from a tesla location as they have to bring back the car for maintenance, as ordenary car-repair-shops will not have the knowhow to do so. That in my opinions sounds a bit strange, as an electric car should be far more easier to check as it said in other bloqs.
In another battery bloq they statet that they have a heating and cooling system integrated in the battery pack so that it will keep itself warm enough so the range should not be affected too much. but it stated too, that letting the car in very hot temperatures for weeks will do the battery no good. I don’t know if there are cold temperatures when the Tesla will stop working, but if they are I guess It will be stated in the manual if it comes out.
@Timo why buy a xbox? PS3 only just started, so there arn’t many games out, and also realy few exclosives. The XBox is cheaper and will have a broader range for games with graphics wich are around the PS3. PS3 on the other hand is a good affordable Bluray player wich will have the upperhand in games too when it starts really running.
Barry:
Good article about climate control on the Roadster here: www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=43
I can’t find a link, but I do know they have said that the car will not initially be available outside the US (and I presume this also means that it can’t be TAKEN outside the US, as you found with the Elise).
My outsider’s perspective: at this point, there is plenty of demand for the car within the US, and unless they massively ramp up production of the Roadster (which doesn’t seem likely), Tesla has little motivation to jump through all the regulatory hoops that would be required to sell the car elsewhere. Might be different down the road, or with the introduction of later models like the WhiteStar.
For me, I just hope they can at least get one to the UK for the TopGear team to test
Found the blog article about spreading to international sales: www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=9
“Our plan, then, is to expand throughout the USA based on demand and our own ability to grow. In the meantime, we are paying attention to your interest and when it comes time to expand, we will do so based on suitability and demand. Again, if we could sell worldwide today, we would!
So for now, it’s one model at a time, one market at a time. Our success with the Tesla Roadster in the USA will enable us to sell more models and in more countries.”
# Barry Thorsness wrote on October 14th, 2007 at 11:28 am
# Two important questions that don’t seem to be addressed anywhere.
# I used to live in Santa Cruz and I know that it gets cold….nobody has said
# how the heat works in this car and what happens to the range when you really do need heat
Well, batteries generate heat, so it could be that up to some point you actually get increased range in cold climate because less energy is needed to keep batteries cool. But only up to some point. Here in Finland it can get over -30 celcius in winter (everything freezes, even tires feel square when you start driving), so I know you might need some warming to batteries, engine and passengers, and that requires some power. How much power depends of how well internal parts of the car are insulated and how fast it gets heated up.
Tesla Roadster is made for warm climate, so it might well be that it is not very good in very cold climates (except for handling, those test-videos were entertaining to watch).
# BradC wrote on October 15th, 2007 at 7:47 am
## Barry:
## Good article about climate control on the Roadster here: www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=43
That’s too bad. It seems that Roadster can’t be used in northern Finland. First of all we get temperatures over -30 C at winter (blog says it is safe to run at -20, even in south border of Finland it gets that cold) and can get over +40 C in sunny summer if car is left to the sun (again tested only at +40 C).
Oh, well. Hope that Whitestar has bigger temperature range.
## For me, I just hope they can at least get one to the UK for the TopGear team to test
Me too. Sooner the better (I think even VP1 would be “ready” enough to give them for testing). Visibility, visibility, visibility. Marketing no. 1. Of course if Tesla gets 100000 orders it _might_ cause some delivery problems…
Sounds great. I hope you add the Tesla roadster to the industry leader: Gran Turismo 5 franchise. Including it in rFactor, woud probably be really great too. I know both game designers like to work with car companies as well to get everything as accurate as possible.
This would get Tesla motors a lot of great exposure from geeks, and people interested in the newest gadgets. It’s the best form of advertising as well, as people can drive the car from the comfort of their living room.
Looks godly! I’d love to own a Tesla roadster, but I suppose that this might have to do. Too many upcoming expenses (college, a home, etc…). I might have to design my own electric car if I get desperate enough for one.
Anyway… just curious, any chance of the Tesla Roadster appearing in Gran Turismo 5? That would be amazing, as I greatly prefer the Gran Turismo series over Project Gotham Racing. But I suppose the folks over at Polyphony Digital might demand the actual schematics.
Congratulations for your excelent work, the roadster is really impressive, wish you the best. really. One more thing, youmay be interested in a poll Wired is taking in their site regarding “The Most Underappreciated Scientists of All Time”, I have submited the name of Nicola Tesla. If you think like me that Tesla is one of the most preminent scientist of all time vote at:
blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/vote-the-most-u.html
Lenny Zimmermann you are right. I’ll surely cry with you.
Hope in the future we’ll have the opportunity to try out The Roadster on a PC.