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Ken Jacobs was one of the first employees at the relational database pioneer Oracle Corporation. He and his wife Margaret are thrilled to be early adopters and advocates for the pioneering Tesla, the car and the company.
My wife and I, returning home to the US from a week in Morocco, spent a couple of days in London, where we enjoyed the better sanitary conditions and also took in a couple of theatre shows. We also saw the fabulous King Tut exhibit at The O2. The next day, we set out to see how well the Tesla Roadsters are coming along – a highlight of the entire trip.
We took a pleasant two-hour train ride from London Liverpool Station to Norwich, where we met Glyn Owen, who runs the UK operation for Tesla. Glyn drove us through some beautiful English countryside from Norwich to Hethel, where the Lotus plant is located. Along the way, he shared his background and feelings for Tesla. He’s a well-experienced automotive professional, and is obviously very committed to the success of Tesla Motors. Glyn is a perfect gentleman, and very forthcoming about Tesla’s management and technology, and the progress of development.As you know, Lotus has responsibility for assembling the Tesla Roadster, but Tesla has a reasonable presence on-site. We saw the space that Tesla rents from Lotus. Previously, a lot of engineering was done there, but now, as production has begun, the staff is reduced, and there is a large area with empty desks. The 40 or so Tesla employees in Hethel are monitoring the production process, and verifying engineering information as it arrives from San Carlos, CA and the suppliers. The Tesla employees are also responsible for quality assurance checking, including specifically the inspections done from the customer-viewpoint rather than the engineering/assembly viewpoint.
We didn’t actually see any Tesla Roadsters being assembled at the time we visited. One Roadster was being painted, and thus was off-limits to us “civilians”. On the other hand, we did see a couple of nearly finished products, including Martin Eberhard’s vehicle, and quite a beauty it is! It’s now in the US and hopefully will soon be in Martin’s garage – or on the road!
What happens in Hethel is assembly, not manufacture. There are, as I recall, some 3,000 parts (or sub-assemblies) that ship to the Lotus plant from various suppliers throughout Europe and elsewhere. These parts are then put together to build a Tesla Roadster. They keep a relatively small inventory of parts on hand, so it is something of a just-in-time inventory management system. Of course, the rate of production will always be relatively small, so Lotus doesn’t need to have a large inventory.
I was amazed to see that it is entirely a manual process. No robots. No power tools. Just simple screwdrivers and wrenches and some pulleys mounted from above to hoist heavy components. The Roadster is clearly a hand-made vehicle, with a lot of love and personal attention given to each vehicle as a result. The main assembly line in Hethel has 12 stations, at each of which the workers have 43 minutes to do the work required to move the car along. Each station has 2 or 3 guys working on a phase of the assembly process, whether it’s integrating the pre-built chassis with the frame, installing the wheels and brakes, the windshield, the body panels or the seats.
At each step, the technicians must be very aware of the specific car they are building, and whether it is a Tesla Roadster or a Lotus Elise. The Roadster and the Elise are different vehicles, of course, and have many different parts, even though they share the same assembly line. The workers ensure that each Roadster gets the right Tesla parts, installed to Tesla specifications for such things as the proper torque levels for tightening bolts, etc. At the end of the line, after 12×43 minutes (about 8 hours), something very much like a Lotus Elise or a Tesla Roadster will emerge.
The Lotus assembly line was specially modified for the Roadster, to accommodate the installation of the 900-pound ESS (”energy storage system”), the car’s battery. The original intent was to ship complete and drivable Roadsters from the UK to the US. This has now changed. My understanding is that when Tesla begins installing powertrain 1.5 in new Roadsters, it will be done in California. Thus, everything but the battery and powertrain will be installed in Hethel. The resulting so-called “glider” is then shipped to California (about 5-6 weeks by boat, I’m told). For each battery, 6,831 lithium ion cells are sent from Japan to California, where the battery is built. This change saves Tesla shipping costs, and makes the Roadster a “California car”. The Tesla Store about to open in Menlo Park will do the final installation of the battery and powertrain.
One of the more interesting steps on the assembly line is where the body panels are installed. There is a special frame that holds the body panels and aligns precisely with the body and chassis of the car being built. There are two sides to this frame, one for Lotus cars and one for the Tesla, and it rotates 180 degrees on its vertical axis depending on which car (and whether the right or left side of the vehicle) is being fitted with the panels. The panels are both bolted and glued to the frame. Apparently the glue is strong enough to hold the panels on, but the bolts give the body extra rigidity and integrity.
No doubt you know that the Roadster uses carbon-fiber body panels, not more conventional fiberglass or metal parts. These parts require a highly specialized manufacturing process. Glyn told us that the latest glitch in the production of the Roadsters was a need to change the supplier for the body panels. Tesla was simply not getting the required quality. By now, this problem has been fixed, and the plant is currently ramping up production with body panels from the new supplier.
The body panels are painted before they are installed. The panels for a given vehicle are mounted to, and painted on, a special frame that holds the parts roughly in the shape of a Roadster. It’s like one of those “exploded” views of a car, where all you see are the body panels floating in space. This approach ensures that the paint job is uniform for any given vehicle. We were not allowed anywhere near the painting area, which is kept scrupulously clean. The inspection of the paint job is also meticulous. Each car is closely examined and paint touch-ups are done in a dust-free enclosed area with bright lights so workers can find and fix the slightest defects.
There are several other stages during the rest of the process of assembly, including installing the seats, the doors, and all the rest of the interior and exterior details. Naturally, inspections take place at several points along the way, so problems can be detected as soon as possible, and close to where they can be addressed. Each vehicle has its own checklist, recording the items that require attention before the car can be released. The Tesla team at the Lotus plant has final authority for a “customer inspection”. After all, Tesla Motors is a customer of Lotus, just as most of us are customers of Tesla Motors.
I had an enormous thrill at the end of our visit to the Lotus plant: a couple of fast laps around the track in a Roadster validation prototype! It was a dark green one, and showed the signs of how tough life must be for a prototype vehicle that gets driven and modified often. A nice young man named Sean, who’d obviously been around the track more than a few times, drove, thank goodness. The track is about 2 miles long, and we completed each lap in about 60 seconds. Two laps at 115 mph really gave Sean the opportunity to show how well he can drive, and to demonstrate the incredible handling and acceleration of which the Roadster is capable.
The track is not a simple oval, but has a few straight-aways and many sharp turns, some with piles of tires on the side of the pavement. Sean wasn’t shy. We took every turn with gusto, and only once did we experience anything like slipping. The Roadster holds the road like a train holds the rails, and it accelerates like the Space Shuttle (well, almost!).
We had just about overstayed our time. We quickly got in Glyn’s car and he drove us back to the train. Though Glyn didn’t have to speed (much) on the way to the train station, I’m convinced that if Sean had driven only 114 mph, we would have missed the train back to London.
It took me several days to wipe the smile off my face, and I was reluctant to leave without taking a Roadster with me! It was a great day. Thanks, Zak, for arranging this visit, and thank you Glyn and Sean and the others we met in Hethel for your hospitality. The only Roadster experience that will top our visit to the plant will be the day we take delivery. I can hardly wait!
Posted in the categories: Performance, Company, On the Road
Thanks for sharing your visit to the plant in Hethel, Ken. Hopefully the photos alone will help to silence some of the doubting Thomases who still believe (and post) that Tesla won’t be able to deliver Roadsters in any quantity, let alone meet its most recently stated production goals. On the other hand, I’m probably too optimistic on that score, given the nature of doubting Thomases.
In any event, given some of the comments you made (including Martin’s car being there, and no Roadster assembly going on at the time), it would seem that the visit you spoke of was some time ago, as opposed to say, last week? If you or someone could confirm that, I am sure many of us owners and other interested onlookers would appreciate it!
Happy to tell you precisely when I was there … it was May 14th, so it definitely was a couple of months back, before production started to ramp up!
To be clear, there just didn’t happen to be any Roadsters on the 12-station assembly line at the time. But, as I said, others were in various stages of being painted, inspected, etc.
Keep the faith! It’s easy to be convinced this car is worth waiting for!
Is the company that supplies Tesla with the carbon fiber panels Sora Composites? That’s what was said in a previous french blog post.
Great commentary! It must be a thrill to again see something grow from an idea into a success. It sure seems like the electric car’s time has come.
Great to hear about your visit Ken. A couple of laps around the Lotus test track will make many a British car fan jealous, in a Roadster makes me even more so.
It is great to hear so much about the Roadster. Apparently some shots of the Model S have leaked out and I must say that I lost much of my excitement when I saw this photo. Hope Tesla is listening to the future customers out there….
Apparently Martin got his Roadster on Saturday, July 19th. He blogged about it, including several pictures of the car and the charging station, the same day.
I hope we ll get more news on how assembly going on
EV Buzz, you must be talking about the Model S drive train mule using a Dodge Magnum. The weight and wheelbase are probably the only significant pieces of information you can glean from that. Daryl can probably explain further. As Ken says above, “Keep the faith!”
ev buzz, do you know something we don’t, or are you spreading the same misunderstanding that popped up here last week? I’m guessing it’s the latter, and you saw the pictures of a “mule” …an existing model of car used for testing. In this case it was a Dodge Magnum, and they are using it to test the Model S drivetrain. The Model S will not necessarily look anything like that, so you can get your excitement back.
Hmm…well, after a quick google search, I did find one other possibility: you weren’t taken in by this were you? www.autobloggreen.com/2008/07/12/super-secret-photo-of-tesla-whitestar-leaks-out-of-san-carlos/
It’s a pretty obvious joke….but it’s pretty funny. [ For additional clarity, and as Hunter pointed out, the ABG post is satire, amusing, not-a-real-car, good for a chuckle, a fake, a gag, and so on - Ed.]
Hunter, Yes, this was the photo. I was so stunned by what i saw that i failed to realize it was a hoax. upon revisiting the link, it was clear the mistake I had made. Thanks and keep up the great progress Tesla!!! I am anxiously awaiting the Model S!!!
Yeah, the fourth missile was a dead give-away.
Now we know how to do REALLY bad design. A masterpiece!
When will you expand to other states…say… Pennsylvania (in the Philly area)? I am excited about this car company & it’s vision! Are there plans for cars which carry more than two passengers?
I want one-Unfortunately, it’s out of my pric e range. Why is it that a small, upstart company like Tesla can literally bring such a great product to market overnight, and Detroit’s “Big 3″ are still years away from anything similar?????
The photo tour of the Lotus plant was great. I’ve been a Tesla devotee for lo these many years. There is an annual Tesla Tech fest in Telluride, CO., usually the second weekend of August. This year is the eighth, however a weekend early. Ever since I first heard about the Roadster, I’ve been following it online, hoping someday someone will bring one to Telluride to sit next to the Tesla coil. What a coup that would be for Scott who runs the fest.
Great to see the progress of this badboy being documented on the website. Keep up the work chaps, it will be worth waiting for.
I’m a fan; what a thrill to see that Tesla is finally getting some of his due!!! Thanks to PBS for getting the word out.
OK gentlemen; I need room for the grandkids, remember the space needed for car seats, and please hurry!!!
The BIG market, and NEED, is the family car…..
God bless America,
Elloise
Some great shots there. I know what it’s like to have to change suppliers right when you are trying to ramp production. Makes one very crazy. Much worse when you have a bunch of dimbos screeching at you.
What I’d like to know is the approximate ground clearance planned for the S.
Christopher:
This was NOT done overnight. It was years in the making.
But otherwise, yah, Detroit is in for quite a shock when they start losing market share to San Carlos.
Jim
Please stop production I have a better energy and cheaper ‘PERPETUAL ENERGY By: MORATO” no gas, oil, water, battery, wind, solar, nuclear. This PERPETUAL ENERGY is base on Mr. Nicholas Tesla, If you want to know about it. Please email me this is bigger than the computer age. This energy can be and will be used in the whole word free. Imaging sending a Rocker to the moon with this energy without expending one penny on Energy. The time has come.
George Morato: Let me guess - you don’t actually have a working “Perpetual Energy” machine yet, but you’ve got a great idea, and you feel that with enough money for parts and enough time and effort you think you can make it work? Join the crowd, there have been hundreds of proposed “perpetual energy” machine designs of various types over the last 3 centuries. The one thing they all have in common is that NONE OF THEM WORK.
Sorry, but Tesla Motors can only use things that actually work and are available in the market, and they cannot afford to fund research into an area that has a 100% failure rate and a desturbingly high rate of fraud. Come back when you have a fully functional prototype.
Nikola Tesla’s “Free Energy” plan wasn’t to “gather energy from the cosmos”, it was to buy energy made by regular powerplants and transmit it around the world so everyone could get it for FREE! Of course, giving away something that costs money and getting nothing in return is a surefire way to go broke. Tesla was an engineering genius, but was also a financial fool with no business sense,
Re: Postings
Surely there are more intelligent postings than those that claim to have invented a “Perpetual motiobn machine”?
Come on TM! Many of us have been loyally following this site for years and are thirsting for information. You can do better than that . . . at least you did in the past.
Peter J Hedge
Victoria, BC
# Peter J Hedge wrote on July 31st, 2008 at 6:23 am
# Surely there are more intelligent postings than those that claim to have invented a “Perpetual motion machine”?
Give the guy a break, PJH. I, for one, was fascinated by the idea of “sending a Rocker to the moon.” Forward-thinking Roadster-owner Flea, perhaps?
Before we send a rocker to the moon we should probably start with something a little simpler. Like a barstool.
Far more likely a barfool than a barstool.
It was a thrill for me to visit the new Menlo Park facility today and to see several Teslas. Tesla prototype number 16 blue color was out in the parking lot , and it was a pleasure just getting to sit in it. I tried the horn , and it needs to have two notes to lend the proper class the car deserves. Getting into the car was no problem for me , but my getting out I’m sure would improve over time. That is quite a wide ledge alongside of the driver’s seat to climb over. I anticipate watching Tesla Motors progress, and by the way Tesla spelled backwards is Alset. May Tesla be all set to succeed! Chuck Holmes
Beautiful car!
The zinc air battery has much promise. A pilot program in Las Vegas involved a full sized buss operating from zinc air technology. Given that Li-ion batteries are very expensive and lithium is not available in large quantities, why not use a zinc air battery pack? Also, the ploymer film capacitors that are larger than one farad may provide an inexpensive, light weight altarnative to battery technology. ( hint, look at A.U.’s polymer center).
Nikola Tesla would be proud to see his name on such a car as this. I can hardly wait to see your next offering, the sedan. The big three had better get their heads out of their collective butts & climb aboard or be left in the lurch with their dinosaurs. They march to a different drummer. You just don’t know how gratifying it is to me to see a company like yours burst onto the scene & show the world how it’s done. WOW! Howard K.
Gary, you can’t recharge zinc-air batteries. There are various schemes to rcycle the powder, but this is not nearly as convenient as plugging in at your garage.
HEY TM! HOW ABOUT AN UPDATE! WHITESTAR AND ROADSTERS DELIVERED???? Love the products, hate the slooooowwwwww updates……. Still forever a fan, Me
I, for one, was quite disappointed to hear plans for a New Mexico plant had been cancelled. Lord knows we have a savvy workforce here (Sandia Labs, Eclipse Aviation, and Intel for example). And lots of sun, too. I just caught the PBS segment with the Car Guys at the Tesla plant. Some nice publicity. I wonder if the “Tesla treatment” could be added to, say, a mid-sized frame such as the Matrix/Vibe.
I live about 40 miles from hethel, I am extremley jealous that there isn’t a right hand drive version for our british roads,Good luck with your great enterprise.
J.J.F.
I like the looks of the Tesla Car. I would to see mass production and a very much cheaper car. If they (Tesla Motors) are to take on the big Three or Four the price needs to be more reasonable. With american inventivness the price should come down drastically. Now for Mass Production.
Thanks Tesla Motors for a very interesting Car your keeping the DREAM ALIVE.
Re: UK Perks of the EV
I watched a news item last night about EV’s in London. Apparently if you own one you get free parking, free roadside charging and pay no road tax (maybe someone in the UK can verify this as I don’t necessarily believe everything I see on the news) in addition to the gas and maintenance savings.
If that isn’t an incentive to go out and get one I don’t know what is.
Peter J Hedge
Victoria, BC
I second the request for an update. The last one was almost a month ago. I am sure there has been some progress since then. Please share
I’m excited by the news that Tesla has hired a key Mazda designer to work on Whitestar and Bluestar. Who’s zoomin’ now, baby?
Gary: You’re right that zinc air batteries are promising, but there are some problems. Attempts to recharge those cells gave only a few charge cycles before growing zinc crystals shorted them out, so most zinc-air cells are single use disposables not suitable for car use. An alternative is the zinc-air fuel cell, which can be quickly refilled with zinc pellets and the zinc oxide “waste” drained off and recycled back into zinc metal. The cost of operation is higher for a zinc-air fuel cell than for LiIon batteries, but zinc-air fuel cells might prove to be an ideal “range extender” for an EV. By the way, Lithium is actually more abundant than Zinc, but both of those metals are common and cheap enough to power the entire fleet of cars.
Capacitors aren’t ready to power cars, the best ultra-capacitors available store less energy per Kg than old fashioned lead acid batteries. There is research ongoing to improve both capacitors and batteries, but I expect batteries to be the preferred choice for decades to come.
Mike in ABQ: Tesla Motors isn’t planning any conversions, and it will be awhile before they come out with anything like an EV Matrix, but there are other companies working on it. Apparently, BMW is planning to produce some Mini Cooper EVs, and if they work well and have enough demand might go into production.
John Flynn: You live 40 miles from Hethel? Now I’m jealous! Tesla has already announced plans for European sales starting next year, so a right-hand drive version isn’t too far off.
Yup they got a guy from Ford & Mazda! Next month things going to ramp up in the production dept. I agree, it would be REALLY nice to see all this info. reflected here, instead of finding it scattered across the web!
I know how considerably to improve your construction!
To decrease mass in 2-3 times!
To increase the cycle of run in 3-4 times!
With kind regards,
I was just thinking about all the possibilities with Georgie’s free energy: let’s move Mars closer in and drop a few ice comets on it to make a nice wet warm climate, and then maybe put a few 1000-mi. diameter hydroponic domes down and then ship off the surplus population there! Hey, with free energy, you can do anything!
Of course, it would be easier just to put a shell around the moon and fill it with atmosphere; much closer and more accessible, too. But first, let’s scrub all the pollutants out of Earth’s atmosphere, and desalinate enough water to irrigate all the world’s deserts, and so on. Wow, what fun!
Deer Mistar Musk,
My brother was paid off by the government because he have invented the worlds first motor car that run purely on rain water. Sadly he was killed by a rogue elephant two yeras ago and his money ($430,560,123) is locked away in his bank account here in Mozangola (Africa).
However I have found way to get this money out of Africa as well as the plans of his invention and would like to give to Tesla Motors.
Mistar Musk ,as a fellow African if you send me International Monye Order for ($30,000,000) – the cost of bribing necessay bank officlails, I will send you the full amount within a week.
I remain your humble and most obedient servant,
Togalosh*
AKA Peter J Hedge
Victoria
BC
*For those who haven’t spotted it this is a “wind-up”. But having seen offers on this site for perpetual motion machines and how to reduce the mass by 2 – 3 times . . . thought I’d try my luck too.
[Before we all go bananas on this comment, remember that Peter’s tongue is likely in cheek - ed]
IOW, don’t get your wind up and get all wound up by Peter’s wind-up!
It would be nice to hear something about whitestar / model s.
I just read a current article regarding zinc-silver batteries and have included the link here. These are NOT the same as the zinc-air batteries mentioned above and seem like they might have potential for Tesla applications. The link is
www.electronista.com/articles/08/08/12/zpower.zinc.silver.battery/
Cheers fellow Teslans
I think that anyone banking that Tesla Motors will be a long term player in the industry (i.e., Roadster owners, investors, future stockholders) would expect that Tesla Motors has a person (or persons, or group) whose sole responsibility is to research new or improved battery technologies. By the time the first Roadster batteries have reached the end of their useful life, the replacement batteries, even if still Li-ion, should have improved over the ensuing years such that they would offer better range, at lower cost, and lighter weight. All of which would mean that the cars already out there could be upgraded to the new technology and thereby move on to even better performance than when they were purchased new.
While we’re at it, can anyone address this question: Let’s say that some new technology proves itself in the markeplace over the next few years, such as the Altairnano NanoSafe batteries proposed for use in the Lightning. Is there any reason that new technology could not be the basis of the next generation ESS in the Roadster? I’m talking about engineering feasibility of adapting the new technology, not patent or other business barriers.
Probably not unique to Li-Ion, but the new nanowire approach to cathodes, and parallel anode technology, have the potential to multiply Li-Ion capacity by 10. The silver-zinc batteries would have to do something similar to keep up.
# George Morato wrote on July 29th, 2008 at 8:19 pm Imaging sending a Rocker to the moon with this energy without expending one penny on Energy. The time has come.
But what if we like Rock&Roll. I say send the Con-Men and Fraudsters (George) up there instead
You know, it strikes me that no one knows what the market value of a Roadster is. The only way to find out would be for a new owner to put his car on the market, and take bids. Then a few more, until the price offering stabilized. The sticker price right now is Teslamotors’ best guess, and it has no shortage of buyers, but the “real” price might be quite a bit higher.
Very interesting letter
This product and project is amazing. Why does it take the little guy to produce something we have really needed for such a long time? Oh, I forgot GM spent all of their time making wonderful cars like the Corvair, Chevette, Vega ( worst piece of halibut ever perpetrated on the American public), and the full size Impala for 30 years after its demise. Ford finally adapted “Quality is Job 1” after almost 80 years in business. One would think that they would have figured that out a few years earlier. What can one say about perpetually bankrupt Chrysler (a living will could have helped them pull the plug 30 years ago?)
Now we have TESLA trying to make a difference. I’m not surprised that good ole American ingenuity has come to the fore front again. But wait, what about that wonderful product called “Apple” ? Best computer ever made. The PC with windows operating system is a hackers dream and after years of work the reliability issue is finally getting up to Apple’s standards. The question is which sells more, the PC or Apple? We all know the answer. The score is 91 to 9. The PC being 91.
Now how about the race between VHS and Beta? Beta was significantly better in quality and initially a little cheaper, than VHS. Try to find one now. You’ll have to go to the professionals or the TV stations and look in their junk pile. VHS simply dominated the marked as does the PC. One of the big reasons was that both VHS and PC’s licensed their product. They let (sold the rights) others build the product in turn creating immense competition. They let others market the product and they did it correctly.
Now Tesla Motors has a choice. Should they continue to sell 500 cars a year or should they license their technology so that everyone can participate. Does everyone need a carbon fiber body sitting on a Lotus frame on a car that will go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds? I think not! What we (I) want is inexpensive, clean, reliable transportation that is more friendly to our environment. Sure the Jay Leno’s of the world can afford the Starship Voyager but then there are the other 6 billion of us. When are we going to see this technology in our driveways? When are we going to get to participate in the 21st century?
MY vote says sell the technology. Take the money and become more innovative so that everyone gets to participate. Take that “Innovator of the year award”, hang it on the wall and get back in the lab. Have fun building and getting better (you obviously do that very well.) Sell the new technology to become even more innovative and creative. You’ll never be as big as Ford or GM and I sure you don’t want those headaches either.
Do you want to be Apple or PC? Do you want to Beta or VHS? The choice is yours. The technology growth for the next 100 years will be amazing. You are part of that growth. It actually comes down to three simple choices instead of two. You get to either Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. I (and everyone else in the world) hope that you choose to become “THE LEADERS” of the Transportation Technology and Innovation for the next century. I have a space reserved in my drive way for your answer!
It would be nice to hear something about whitestar / model s.
this is awsome!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Francis;
You wrote:
“Now Tesla Motors has a choice. Should they continue to sell 500 cars a year or should they license their technology so that everyone can participate. Does everyone need a carbon fiber body sitting on a Lotus frame on a car that will go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds? I think not! What we (I) want is inexpensive, clean, reliable transportation that is more friendly to our environment.”
EV technology is there for everyone to get and use. Unique to Telsa is in fact only their manufacturing process. Problem with price is batteries, not the rest of the car. If battery price were low, and/or you wouldn’t need as many of them as you do, then affordable EV would have been in anybodys reach decades ago.
BTW. You might want to read this: www.sahkoautot.fi/eng.
Anyone *can* participate. It surprises me that major car manufacturers have not done that already. If we can get out converted sedan EV with similar performance as original car out in approx 27000 EUR (in Finland with ripoff car taxes) then major car manufacturer can do it approx half that if they want it.
Only benefit gasoline cars have compared to EV:s is distribution network of gasoline which expands gasoline car range practically indefinitely. EV:s didn’t have that because of classic chicken and egg -problem. You can’t have range-extending charging stations because you don’t have EV:s, and you don’t have EV:s because they don’t have enough range without charging stations. Think other way around. Imagine that you don’t have gasoline stations. Would you buy ICE-car if you can’t drive it more than few hundred miles?
Now technology is producing so good batteries that you get huge range without those charging stations. Big enough range that you have some limited freedom of driving without those charging stations. And because of that you start to get EV:s. And because of that you start to get demand of charging stations to extend that limited freedom to infinite freedom. So they will appear. And then suddenly you don’t *need* that huge range anymore. But you do have it if you want to. It’s a domino-effect. Tesla has toppled the first domino - rest will follow automatically.
I am disappointed at the choice of a small Lotus carriage. I am 6 foot and cannot get in and out of a Lotus elise. It will be interesting to see what Americans think of it once the initial enthusiasm to alternate technologies spawns an industry of spinal care. Lotus Elise is the most unconfortable car I have ever been in.
Sorry……
John;
the body and interior have been resized; many 6′+ users find the Roadster comfortable. When you get up to about 6′7″ there begins to be a problem, though!
Hey Dudes,
Telsa Motors have still not published ,the useful life of the battery pack, whilst drving in Arizona summer heat, or Chicago winter cold.
Why is that. ?
How much $$ to replace the battery pack ?
At what depth of discharge, or state of charge , will the battery not deliver 0 to 60 in 3.9 secs.?
How long does it take to install a new battery pack , One hour , one day , one week. ?
How long (time) to fully charge the battery, from its cut off operating voltage ?
Galactic Cannibal
Now Tesla Motors has a choice. Should they continue to sell 500 cars a year or should they license their technology so that everyone can participate. Does everyone need a carbon fiber body sitting on a Lotus frame on a car that will go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds? I think not! What we (I) want is inexpensive, clean, reliable transportation that is more friendly to our environment. Sure the Jay Leno’s of the world can afford the Starship Voyager but then there are the other 6 billion of us. When are we going to see this technology in our driveways?
Hello,
I am really excited by what Tesla Motors has achieved, an electric sprots car. I have a crazy dream, I would like to some day convert my car to run on electricity. Can anyone tell me how much the Tesla Motors ac motor weighs? Could Tesla Motors tell me how much it would cost to purchase?
I read the battery weighs abour 450kg, how much would it cost?
Wouldnt it be great if Tesla Motors had the resources to convert peoples cars to electric.
Thanks
Goz
I somehow agree with Paul Francis here. What’s really needed badly by the world today is a broad reach on the programme on the “electrification” of vehicles. Tesla may be at the forefront of what is probably considered to be the prime application of reusable batteries on vehicles but the method appears to be… sad to say… elitist. I am hoping to see spectacular advances too in electric powered motorcycles. Of course, Tesla may already have too much on its hands already, but the needs of the world remains the same, and the clocks are continuously ticking.
I’ve read www.sahkoautot.fi/eng - thanks for the additional reference.
Is there any way that you can get the $60,000 price down on the new 4 door sedan that will be coming out in 2010 ? Can’t you shrink it just a bit and place it on the market for $35000. I know that it is a better car than the new Chevy Volt, hands down and I shudder to even state it in this comment, however, if the Volt comes in at $30,000 and your Tesla is $60,00, well, crimany I can’t afford it. Bummer
@ Goz:
www.metricmind.com for ’similar’ power train (motor, controller & gearbox) otions
www.everspring.net for batteries
www.evdl.org for advice/info/forum
www.evalbum.com for other ev conversion examples (including mine #2092)
These are but a few of the many options. Have a look at the links page on my website - www.winlow.co.uk for more (’EV Conversion’ - ‘EV Links’).
Good luck. MW, UK
Finally a car that’s worth it’s name! Bravo, keep refining the best!!
Congratulations to all folks involved to this project. This is the future and I believe in this concept. Continue your good work ’cause eventually people will massively be begging for this product. It’s really time to change our thinking about cars, mobility and energy using!! I wish I had the money to buy this machine, otherwise I would have made my order right now. But because I’m just a youngster working 9 to 5, I’ll need to wait several years, I guess, until this “third” model is ready for production.
Is there actually any more information about other models? And how long it would take before they’re available?
I got my knowledge about Tesla from a documentary on Dutch television and a Belgian automobiles forum …
Keep up the great work
Luk
What is going on with Tesla? A friend said that your laying people off, is the market hurt Tesla?
i was mesmerised when i first saw the tesl on a tv programme being a big fan of clean motoring i immediately went on the net to read about it and i must say i am impressed as i have been wondering just how long before we have such technology. i may never be able to afford it i am glad for you guys and those that will own it as its such clean technology i look forward to the day when we have more of these developed to be more affordable and save the planet. HOORAY TESLA!
the gentlement can contact ac propulsion in glendora, ca to obtain the weight of electric motor.
I have visited their facility.A LLAN AND PAUL ARE OFFICERS .
Matt