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Michael Marks was interim CEO of Tesla from August 2007 to November 2007. Before that he was CEO of electronics manufacturing services company Flextronics. He sits on the board of directors at several public and private technology companies, and he has been managing partner of Riverwood Capital since March 2007. He took ownership of his Roadster – Founders Series No. 22 – in November 2008.
As a partner in a Silicon Valley investment firm, I spend a lot of time in my car – driving from startup to startup, meeting with engineers, entrepreneurs, executives and bankers. I’m also part owner of the Golden State Warriors, so I spend a lot of time driving from my home in Palo Alto across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland. It’s not unusual for me to put 125 or more miles on my car in a single day.
I used to log all these miles in a Porsche 911 Turbo. But after I took ownership of my Roadster in November, I drove the Porsche less and less. By February, when my four-year lease was up, I decided not to replace the Porsche. Why bother? It wasn’t as much fun to drive as the Roadster. Owning both seemed like needless overlap.
So far, I’ve clocked 6,500 miles on my Roadster and haven’t regretted giving up the Porsche for a second. The Roadster is simply the most fun car I’ve ever owned.
In fact, my ownership experience makes me question the entire notion of “range anxiety.” I refuel my car each night by plugging it in — a 10-second feat I accomplish in my own garage. I wake up each morning and the car is fully charged. I haven’t been to the gas station in months.
To be honest, the only real complaint I have about the Roadster is that its windshield is perpetually filthy. Think about it: If you don’t stop at a gas station, when would you clean your car’s windshield?
When I was interim CEO of Tesla, I would get a lot of questions from media and from prospective customers about charge times. It’s true that the Roadster takes 3.5 hours to charge from dead empty to full on a 240V/70A home system. But focusing on the full recharge time is not relevant to the typical ownership experience.
The Roadster gets well over 200 miles per charge, so it’s very rare that I get perilously close to empty – even after a long day of shuttling to meetings around the Bay. I typically have at least half a charge when I return to my garage at the end of the day, so my car is recharged long before I wake up in the morning.
If we are going on a weekend trip with friends and family, we all pile into my wife’s SUV. But I have a soft spot for little, fast sports cars. That’s why I drove a Porsche for the last seven years. And that’s why I thrill to the scorching acceleration of the Roadster.
But my sheer delight behind the wheel of the Roadster continues to surprise me. Even though I was an early investor in Tesla and was the company’s interim CEO in 2007, I’m not a dedicated environmentalist. I didn’t buy this car to make a statement about my values. I’m not vegan. I don’t have solar panels on my roof. And I certainly didn’t expect to replace my tried-and-true German sports car with an electric vehicle.
Nor did I buy the Roadster because I’m a flashy person who needs to have the newest boy toy on the block. A couple weeks ago, I went to a conference at a hotel on Sand Hill Road – the strip in Menlo Park, California, that serves as the epicenter of the global venture capital industry. There were four other Teslas parked in the lot!
I love the Roadster because it’s a hell of a ride – and at the end of the day, for EVs to become mainstream options for customers, that’s all that matters. They need all the performance and convenience attributes of a gasoline car. They need to serve as your only car.
Mission accomplished.
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Thank you for giving us the benefit of your real-world driving experience with the Roadster. I agree that, given a BEV range greater than 200 miles per charge, the “range anxiety” complaints are just FUD. As you point out, for most people, most of the time, convenient — practically effortless — overnight charging will be the rule. The fact that, occasionally, someone might forget to charge their vehicle, or drive far enough to empty the battery and end up needing a full, multi-hour recharge en route, shouldn’t keep mass-quantities of Tesla BEVs from being sold and driven by satisfied customers every day. I am cheered that the Model-S will have swappable battery packs, as this has always seemed to me to be the most practical and cost-effective method of “quick-charging” in long-haul and emergency circumstances. Given a reasonable distribution of swapping outlets around the country, the last major objection to having a BEV as one’s “daily driver” (other than high vehicle price, of course) will be eliminated.
Your take on the range “bogeyman” is spot on. People are unnecessarily concerned with range and recharge times and have an irrational fear of being stranded. As batteries continue to improve this will be even less of an issue.
Michael -
Glad to see you are enjoying your Tesla Roadster. I remember riding w/ you in your 911 Turbo, and I agree w/ you based on many rides in Martin Eberhard’s Tesla Roadster and my own Porsche 944 Turbo, that a Tesla Roadster is much more fun to drive. I’m looking forward to the day that I can drive my Tesla from Chicago to Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wi on a single charge and relive Phil Hill’s laps of the track.
“To be honest, the only real complaint I have about the Roadster is that its windshield is perpetually filthy. Think about it: If you don’t stop at a gas station, when would you clean your car’s windshield?”
You’d think that would make visits to the gas station even more fun -
“Cheerio, gents, I’m just here for some wiper water. I haven’t been here for so long; they haven’t started charging for *that* now, have they? Mwahahahahaha!”
First off I am not a owner or your product but I love what ur company is trying to do.
My question is if conventional has an altenator to supply power to the car, is it possible that your cars can have an onboard power generator that supplies electrical current to the drive motors so you can drive futher without recharging, the batteries would be used to get the car going and once its get up to a certain speed, the electrical generator will kick in to supply power. I know you guys can do it……
My next car purchase takes place in 2010, hope you’ve tapped the South African Market by then. Cheers
Your feelings on the car are largely similar to my own. The environmentalism etc I find as secondary benefits. The direct benefits I would want are performance, efficiency and reduction of cost & maintenance. Consumer decision to move from one motive source to a new one has to be driven by practical factors, some of those factors are “impractical” like the need for fast acceleration that are major decision factors in a purchase. Some see that as a luxury, after 3 accidents in a Chevy Chevette years ago within a short span (2 of which some faster acceleration response would have allowed me to dodge) I had concluded I would never own a motorized shat-box again. Most of the electrics offered and idealized are as unappealing as the Chevette and conjure to me the dangers of a rolling coffin. Tesla broke the mold and the barrier with the Roadster.
The converting to electromotive transportation is also a matter of energy efficiency and security. Using kinetic energy from burning fuel in individual vehicles returns me a fraction of my dollar in distance travelled compared to converting that same fuel to electricity in a central facility that can maximize the efficiency, then charging an electric vehicle that doesn’t waste it idling in traffic. The gallon of gas I can buy will take me much farther if I buy the end product (energy) rather than attempt to convert the fuel myself. Someone on the blog here posted an article a couple years back about how electricity was essentially “money” in an energy economy between fuel & work performed. Our transportation system bucks this and suffers gross loss & waste because of it. Then of course is the matter of the people we buy our oil from use the profits to finance groups trying to destroy our way of life. Let them drink their oil & pound sand; there is enough oil here for our other uses (plastics, lubricants etc) and we can use various renewables on a foundation of nuclear baseload to meet our energy needs.
One difference also in our circumstance aside from your position as a VC - I do have solar panels on my roof. But just like the car purchase, it was an economic decision not wishy-washy trend setting. The rebate from the local utility coupled with the tax break mean a 6-8 year payoff on a 25 year warranted system - over 15 years of profitable operation (that was reckoning energy costs 3 years ago). With the Obama cap & trade scheme wending its way thru congress electricity costs are going to skyrocket in the near future. Since the system was put in on a net-metering contract that means I am essentially immune to rising energy costs. Re-think those solar panels; for the commoner they may need to start stocking up on candles for light or make a hard choice between some other essential (like food for instance) and paying the electric bill. Don’t get me wrong, some of the changes are good, utilizing what we can when we can from renewables is fine. But ratcheting costs on baseload electric production is just going to kill the consumer in the end though its being sold to hit the dirty coal & oil fired utilities (they pass on costs to the consumer like any other business, if they didn’t, they’d go out of business). Better plan: Get some modern efficient nukes in place and you can phase out most of the coal & oil units without jacking everyone’s bill. I am sure there are those whose tealeaves tell them to disagree - but I have good reason not to be happy with last year’s election results aside from the Puerco Grande stimulus handouts. Maybe after Congress bails out AIG at taxpayer expense (a place where many of Congress had their investments), they can bail out the rest of our retirement plans as well? (Yeah right). I want heads on the wall; do what you want with the rest of their bodies.
I’ve been driving my Roadster for just over two months. When people ask how long it takes to charge, I tell them 20 seconds: 10 seconds to plug it in when I get home and 10 seconds to unplug it in the morning. That’s the honest truth, after the first few days, I haven’t paid any attention to when it actually finishes charging, and I barely pay any attention to how much range I have left. It’s just not a big issue at all. Who cares about range and charging times, as long as it’s ready to go when I need it?
On point exactly! The future is now the present. I hope that soon we will all be able to afford one!
Does the s sedan have to charge each evening if you’ve gone only ,say, 100 miles? Or should i say will a 300 mile charge last three days if you’ve gone 200 or 2 miles? Thank you.
As the owner of Sig 47, I agree completely with Michael about the drivability and use of the Tesla. It has been my daily driver since I took delivery in December and now has ~4700 miles on it. In fact, I thought I was the only owner who was putting significant miles on the car.
Living in the Florida heat seems to diminish my range from the 200+ miles that is claimed. I have been told that the constant cooling of the battery, whether the car is running or not, seems to eat into my range. I get ~150 miles on Standard setting, with my normal driving. True, I love jamming the accelerator and tend to get a little fast on the highway, but I have come to easily function within this “limitation”. I have also lost my range anxiety completely and have learned to trust my instruments.
When you realize this car is not a long distance hauler, it makes perfect sense. I love it and hope it remains as reliable, thrilling and distinctive as it has been. And the fact that it is environmentally responsible, brilliantly innovative, paradigm shattering and efficient certainly doesn’t disappoint me.
Any idea if there is a plan to launch it in India?
While I agree to the most posters here that range anxiety isn’t reality to most Roadster owners, it is still to me. I need a car with range of about 800 km or about 500 miles or fast charging in a way there. Future battery tech will provide such a range and more, but Roadsters 244 miles just isn’t sufficient. Model S is closer, but not quite there yet.
I don’t believe in battery swapping. It have to be based in battery leasing, otherwise it will never be viable business for anybody. I like to own all parts of my car.
You can charge even big car battery quite fast using something like 480V 200A ( 96kW), which is manageable charging voltage and amps. With that you could charge 300 mile worth in less than an hour, and if you start with 600 mile range that is combined 900 miles. With 60mph average speed that is 15 hour driving and one charging. 15 hours driving + one hour lunch charging your car + 8 hour sleep = 24 hours. There just is no need for battery swapping.
I liked that “20 sec charging” -comment. With big enough battery that is true charging time. In very near future It is true even for longer road trips, because you just spend your charging time eating your lunch.
Question to Tesla Motors: will you be willing to swap to more modern battery techs for your current car models when those are available? Could you “buy” that swap in advance?
If you want to see Pop Mechanics jump thru hoops to make a muscle-car hybrid conversion, just for contrast, take a look here:
media.origin.popularmechanics.com/documents/ecomuscle/makeover1.html
Quite a contrast! Basically, it ends up as a 2-seater with ICE mileage of 25 mpg highway, electric 99 city.
Abe;
that’s an old confusion. You can’t charge the car by using its energy of motion, because it came from the batteries in the first place, with small losses at every step. Regen recovery in braking instead of wasting the momentum heating brake pads is the best you can do.
First let me say, I am overly impressed with the new sesan model,It is right on point with thekind of look for the future of young drivers. I am in the mid-west and the only concerns I have are (1) recharging the Telsa, and (2) the battery cost of 4500.00, Other than that you guys have a home run……. look possibly for an order….RH
I’ve put my Audi in the garage for the entire spring and summer and am using my Roadster (VIN 405) as my “Daily Driver”. I’ve logged 2100 miles without any issues whatsoever and although I carry an extension cord in the trunk, in the unlikely event that I will need to charge it somewhere, at no time have I ever come close to using it. I drove it to work and back, which was 30 miles and then drove it another 90 miles over the Wasatch Mountains to Park City to eat dinner and had my seat warmers, heater, and radio all going during the drive and still had an estimated 50 miles when I arrived home. The best part of the drive was descending down Parley’s Summit (approx 8500 ft) into Salt Lake City (approx 4500 ft) and not losing any net battery charge due to the regenerative braking that lasted 14 miles all the while my battery meter did NOT go down. I also love the fact that my cruise control keeps my exact speed going down hill and uses the excess inertia to create electric power. On my audi, the car quickly accelerates over the cruise control speed that I set and I end up braking all the way down the canyon….but with the Tesla the speed you set is the exact speed that you drive no matter what the incline (up or down).
Notice to blog readers. There is another new blog entry in this blog which never got first page. “PV+EV: We’re getting 72 miles per day of sunlight, or 72 MPS!”. It discuss about using solar panes to recharge Roadster. You can access it from left panel. Very good entry.
Now I have to update my list of reasons to stop at a gas station once you have a Tesla.
-Slim Jims
-cigarettes (yech)
-lottery tickets
-clean the windshield
# Timo wrote, “I like to own all parts of my car.”
Well, I like to own all parts of my BBQ grill, too. But I have come around to the idea of “leasing” the propane tank and swapping it out occasionally at the neighborhood supermarket or gas station. It’s an eminently reasonable compromise, as will EV battery swapping and lease/deposit arrangements someday be as well.
I want to be clear that I do not see battery swapping as a typical mode of refueling. Overwhelmingly, the “10+10 second” scenario mentioned by Thomas J will dominate. When that doesn’t apply, people will use “opportunity” charging, when their vehicles are parked for reasonable periods of time at work, when dining, shopping, or being entertained, or while running errands. Only very occasionally — e.g., when the car has been unintentionally discharged through long disuse, battery failure, or other calamity — will a swap be necessary except for “long haul” trips.
For long hauls, one could plan a trip with strategic rest-stops, during which the travelers ate, slept, or recreated while the car acquired additional range. Or, if it were necessary to “keep pushing through,” then take a “pit stop,” rather than a rest stop, pausing only long enough to swap batteries. This latter option will be relatively rare, but will be possible, and practical, as long as EVs are designed with multiple-module battery packs. There are reasons to design this way that have little or nothing to do with the need to “quick-charge” a vehicle. Battery upgrades and other maintenance of the battery system become much easier when the units involved are smaller and standardized. Help for a stranded motorist is easier when the rescuer needs only carry a small, single module, containing enough “juice” to get the hapless driver to the nearest service station, where a full battery swap or recharge can be arranged. NONE of these possibilities involves or requires the upgrading of the electrical grid, or the establishment of any additional infrastructure (beyond having the necessary charging apparatus and a spare module or two at any EV service station or in any tow-truck).
Swappable, standardized, modular batteries just make sense for so many reasons. Their ability to eliminate the need for “fast charging” electrical infrastructure is icing on the cake.
I just counted using data from JB Straubel “Roadster efficiency and range” blog that Model S 300 mile range is halibut near enough for me. That distance I need to travel is about 650km which is about 406 miles. My actual average speed in this is about 50 mph, which increases my range about 10%, which means that I actually need car with EPA 370 mile range. So close.
I could drive a bit slower yet using smaller roads so that I would not slow other traffic in my way, but to get my range I would have to have average speed of about 35 mph, which is too slow. Not extremely too slow, but still. 350 mile range might be enough if I use these slower roads.
I really hope that Tesla next model will have teeny weeny bit bigger range. If it does have over 400 mile range it is enough and I will then buy it as soon as it is available in Finland. Model S with more advanced batteries could be enough if those batteries can handle Finnish weather (over -25C in winter and +30C at summer and everything between those two).
Does anybody have any data which temperature is ideal for batteries? AFAIK they need cooling, so cold weather may actually give bigger range. Am I right? How much colder? Does cabine heating negate improved battery cooling?
About battery swapping: I don’t say that it could be useful to be able to swap batteries, reason why I don’t believe for such infrastructure to appear is that it is not viable as business. Batteries cost money, and if you swap them maybe once every other year that just is not enough customers for it to be profitable. Maybe for some emergency situations it could be, so some car-towing company could have some in case of such incident.
BEV owners just don’t use “gas stations” (just as this blog says). Electricity is available pretty much everywhere. When your range reaches 600 miles with single charge recharging even in long road trips can be done at the same time as you eat your lunch at service station. 600 miles is 10 hour drive at average 60 mph. Not many car owners drive more than that many times at their entire lifetime, and when they do they can plan their trip so that they stop at some service station with recharging capability for a hour or two. With enough BEV in roads every single roadside restaurant and service station will have that capability, because it only requires some wiring and recharger unit, that’s all. Even small pizza place has enough juice going in their wires to handle occasional recharging of long road trip car. I believe _all_ gas stations have that capability already.
Battery tech is advancing so that that 600 mile range battery pack will be about half the size of current Roadster battery pack in very near future. Cost will also go down when factories that do batteries to cars get more than few customers and manufacturing volumes go up.
Almost a decade ago the long range problem was solved AC Propulsion with the Range Extending Trailer
web.archive.org/web/20041208210112/www.acpropulsion.com/Products/Range_extending_trailers.htm
Question to Roadster owners:
How smart Roadster onboard computer is? Can you figure out needed average speed for certain range using GPS navigation data? I trust that model S will have at least as smart system as Roadster has.
I just checked that my actual needed range using road data is just 601 km or about 375 miles. That is so close. I really really hope that when Model S comes to Finnish market battery tech has advanced so that this range or more is reality. I want one. Smaller than Model S would be sufficient to me, but I will need more than two-seater, so no Roadster. Next model maybe. Smaller version of Model S maybe. AWD would be huge bonus and high enough ground clearance that it can be used at rough “roads” (not quite offroad, but not quite real road either).
Acceleration and fast response at highway speeds are important to me, but not high top speed or fast 0-60 times , so maybe you should build car with top speed of about 100 mph, but really fast acceleration when I need to pass some 18-wheeler. I believe that there are a lot of people that would buy a car that can accelerate faster than Ferrari Enzo at passing situations (between 40mph and 90mph) even if that car doesn’t have high top speed. Of course I wouldn’t mind if it has 200mph top speed, I just would not ever use it. If I need to choose between fast acceleration and high top speed I choose acceleration any day as long as top speed is high enough that you can pass cars safely.
Googling Finnish EV websites it seems that this paradigm-shift has not yet reached mainstream Finland. Most websites still talk about “city cars” and “100 km (62.5miles) max range” and things like that. I hope we get some Teslas here to change those plain wrong assumptions of BEV cars.
“Battery tech is advancing so that that 600 mile range battery pack will be about half the size of current Roadster battery pack in very near future.”
Only if “near future” is defined as 10-15 years. There nothing, even in the labs, with this energy density. There are a couple technologies that might reach this level, but not likely. I’ve watched 40 years of break-throughs, break down. I haven’t exceeded 140 miles in one day in three years.
Need more range? Get a hybrid.
to John A.,
you forgot about those giant sodas! Sugar free, of course.
Range Extending Trailers: err…. how about just carrying an extra battery instead of the gas and ICE technology?
I know the cost of the battery (on initial purchase) is quite high. However, from my own calculations, much like the “too high a cost” to solar panels, the long run is where you end up saving on the funds. As a result, it should be considered an investment into your fuel rather than just paying for fuel which is all you do for gas.
A second battery for the Roadster could extend the range from 244 miles to 244 + 300 = 544 miles (875 km). Note that the basic equation does not take into consideration such things as the additional drag which would actually decrease the total distance that could be travelled… but then, if I did a basic calculation on an ICE trailer, I’d still be ignoring the same factor.
Tesla itself could design an appropriate trailer to pull which could double as additional storage (for camping trips for example) as well as have appropriate connections so you could plug it in to the Tesla as you travel.
From my perspective of wanting to move completely away from ICE technology (and all the associating costs including having to visit a gas station and maintain the technology), this would be a better idea to extend the range - at least until the battery technology improves and a range extender is no longer required.
However….. gotta have those camping trips so your storage trailer would be useful for a long time - and you’d gain additional space removing the battery when it’s no longer required.
David_42:
You wrote:
—-
“Battery tech is advancing so that that 600 mile range battery pack will be about half the size of current Roadster battery pack in very near future.”
Only if “near future” is defined as 10-15 years. There nothing, even in the labs, with this energy density.
—-
Yes there are. If you read Sciencedirect Journal of Power Sources you’ll see that chemistries with 400Wh/kg-700Wh/kg is what is tested now, and I saw one article with 540Wh/kg full prototype battery tested. Roadster battery pack isn’t very high energy density pack, only about 150Wh/kg, so that 540Wh/kg would be about 3,6 times Roadster pack translating to 878 mile range. Not quite “600 miles about half the size”, but with 700Wh/kg it would be. That is assuming that we are talking about weight. I don’t believe that battery pack volume would be that much better. Li-Air rechargeable battery for example would have very high Wh/kg figure because Lithium is very light and Air comes outside of the battery, but size of that battery would not get much smaller even that it has 5-10 times current lithium battery energy density.
Good thing is that those all seem to have better cycling capability and have less heat or temperature problems than current models. There are also work being done in power density. One with just different manufacturing method (no chemistry change) gave 175kW/kg power density to battery with 60mAh/g (or about 180Wh/kg if used at 3V).
Of course it takes time to get those in manufacturing, but because these batteries are used in pretty much anything with battery companies fight to be first to get those in market. All laptops, cellphone batteries, power tools etc. will use those. I bet that those appear in manufacturing in about five years, and in 10-15 years we are looking about 1.5kW/kg battery densities (yes, there are techs with potential capability to that or more).
Ill be in Los Angeles , last of August , looking to try your roadster as possible.
Thanks to response.
Jacques Medini .( From Paris, France)
It would seem to me that the purpose of starting up a company like this is to help the environment while making money at the same time. I believe that both goals would be achieved much quicker if you simply priced these cars so that real people could actually afford them.
Also, how does someone, who lives in an apartment building and must park their car on the street, charge one these cars?
The one thing I’m curious about is the impact the car has had on your electric bill. Our power company has raised its rates every year for the past 7 and intends to keep on doing so. Can you comment on the speculative cost of giving the car a full charge?
I read that there will now be Roadster financing through BofA. I pleaded for that and Roadster rentals years ago. If we can cross the first goal off our list, might I have hope that attainment of the second one is imminent? Christmas is coming!
Re: Trailers
Why would anyone who is the proud owner of a Roadster want a trailer . . . for any purpose be it for extra storage space or a spare battery?
The car is a state of the art sportscar for pity sake . . . a trailer or roof rack or whatver would simply defeat the purpose for which it was originally designed.
My bet is the only supporters of this idea (a trailer) are “non-owners”. Those lucky enough to have one can manage quite nicely thank you.
Peter J Hedge
Vicotira, BC
Just saw the 7/16 episode of Royal Pains on USA. Congratulations on the placement! The Roadster looks gorgeous! I hope the gig is a long one.
To answer your questions, Bill: No, you wouldn’t have to recharge the EV every night, if you had over 200 mile range and drove 20 miles or less a day, you could go 10 days between charges. But it is easy to plug in every night, LiIon batteries actually last a bit longer with numerous little charges instead of a few big “empty to full” charge cycles, so it is best to start each day with a full charge.
Starting out as a small company with limited production, it made more sense for Tesla Motors to make a thousand high performance sports cars that could be sold at a high price with a high profit margin, rather than a thousand economy cars that would only sell at a low price with narrow profit margins - especially considering that the development costs would be almost as much for the “cheap EV”. Instead, the profits from the high end sportscar will help build producion capabilitie to produce a larger number of a less expensive sedan, and the profits from the sedan will pay for the development and mass production of an average priced EV for the masses. This “top down” strategy appears to be working, but other EV makers who tried to “start low” with a cheap model are struggling or have gone belly up.
Don’t forget that the astounding performance and good looks of the Roadster and the Model S sedan has attracted a lot of free publicity, thus no advertizing was needed. It also spurred other companies to start their own plug-in projects. A cheaper, more ordinary electric vehicle would have been mostly ignored.
Charles Richey: The cost of a recharge depends on a lot of factors, including how far you’ve driven and your electrical rates, but typically, the “fuel cost” of “driving electric” will be about 1/4 as much as a high mileage hybrid, and 1/5 to 1/10 as much as driving an average gasser.
“Why would anyone who is the proud owner of a Roadster want a trailer” ….. hey…. don’t shoot the messenger
I was simply responding to the comment of range-extending. Personally, I think the author of the article has established that “range issues” are nothing more then unproven FUD nowadays with significant proof that “range issues” are not a concern for most.
The individual who has a range of 375 Miles would have an issue only until there’s a coffee shop in between his points which can refuel his vehicle. An obvious alternative to extending the range with a low-tech method would be to have two vehicles. One for the necessary 375 Mile range, the Tesla (Sedan/Roadster) for all other driving. Personally, I can’t imagine living so far from work that I’d have a daily commute of that range. But I guess that’s just me!
From the aspect of camping, the best idea would be if Tesla could produce an electric Pickup Truck…. at least, that would be what would work best for me. I’m still young enough to enjoy a sleeping bag in a tent. True…. my tent sleeps 10 and I use it for a couple…. gotta have some luxuries
I don’t know if these questions have already been asked, but does Tesla Motors intend to produce EV’s more suitable to the general public? ie. small commuter cars, mini-vans, off-road vehicles (SUV’s), motor bikes, etc.?
Also, how does Tesla intend to incorporate Battery Exchange initiatives? I hear Battery Exchange Stations (BES) will no doubt replace Gas Stations.
Finally, who does one contact in order to contribute (financially) to this project? I notice Tesla is not yet being traded publicly.
Do your take our gas cars as a trade in? Or do we have to get rid of them ourselves? Evelyn
I have lived in China for 10 years now and to see the newly rich spend their “not-so-hardly-earned” money on BMW’s, Benz’s and Audis’ makes me wonder, when will Teslas be available in the Chinese market. You would make a KILLER over here! I have no idea when but already saving for when the day comes.
So, have a look and see, there are investors a-plenty in this country. It could easily mean the break needed for global decrease on oil!
TC: Tesla Motors has already stated plans for the $57K Model S sedan, and a $30K EV not yet named. If their first 3 models are reasonably successful, it is likely that they will design models for other markets, and that could include commuter cars, mini-vans, pickup trucks, and small SUVs. I doubt Tesla will go into the electric motorbike business, considering how much competition there already is in that field - Brammo, Zero, Mission Motors, Agni Motors, Motoczysz, Barefoot motors, Electric Motorsports, Honda, etc.are all producing or designing electric motorbikes.
Tesla Motors has sufficient funding for now, with private investments and a loan for advanced vehicles production from the Government. There is a possibility of a public stock offering someday, but not until the management thinks it is needed. Your best course of action now is to start saving up, either for a future stock sale or even better, a future Tesla model.
Roger S:
The person with 375 miles would be me. My problem is that I don’t do daily commutes with a car. I use metro, tram, bus or I just walk. It is cheaper and easier that way. I need that range because I would be doing quite a bit long range trips (at least twice a month), and after I get to my destination car would be obvious choice to travel distances there (lots of 20-60 mile trips just to meet friends and relatives, and there are no metro or tram or useful bus connections there). In longer vacations I would be there most of the time, so my own electric car would be best possible choice of transportation in addition to freedom of it gives. So it is BEV with enough range or ICE car but not both. I’d prefer BEV if it is possible.
I asked local power company if there is charging points between here and there and answer was that not yet. There is some Europe-wide standardization going on, and after they figure out what that standard would be they start to build more of those. They mentioned me 10 minute charging tech, but didn’t mention how big battery could be charged that fast. I bet Type S -like 300 mile range 85kWh battery would need more time, OTOH if I have 300 mile range and need just 75 more to get where I’m going that would be only about 22 kWh more charge. That could be charged pretty fast.
It seems though that before Type S or next model is available here battery tech has improved so that I might not need that charger at all.
TC:
Read www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=8
As you can see there these two first models are just stepping stones to more affordable models.
Model S is supposed to have replaceable batteries, so answer to your question if they are planning to incorporate BES is probably yes. However I don’t believe battery exchange stations replace gas stations. With coming battery development BEV could easily go 600-800 miles with single charge without having high price, so those BES would simply have too few customers to be viable business. Battery charging OTOH will be available just about everywhere, and faster charging in dedicated roadside restaurants and other service stations.
With 600 mile range and available fast charger in about every 100-200 miles you can drive all day without too long breaks in driving. 600 miles in Type S -size car means 170-200kWh battery pack and if we charge 300 mile worth in a hour (not extremely fast) that means 85-100kW connection or about 480 V 200A, which is entirely doable and not even hard. So you drive 900 miles and take one hour break. That’s 16 hours with average 60mph driving speed. With two hour-long breaks that’s 1200miles and 22 hours driving. Additional benefit in this is that you can choose how much charge you want. With battery swapping it is entire battery or nothing at all. Guess also which would cost you more.
Ask yourself how many times have you driven more than 600 miles? Did you have any breaks in between, and how long did those take if any? It takes 10-20 seconds to plug car in and out of charger.
Think about that battery swapping station which uses robots to change batteries. How about we use that same robot-tech to plug really high power charger in instead. 2000V 1000A for example. Then that charging time would be 6 minutes. If grid can’t provide as much juice use battery to battery charging with slow station charging in between. Same components, less price and you get to keep your batteries.
I would really like to see how Project Better Place battery swap station would perform in Finnish winter when your cars entire bottom is full of snow, dirt and is frozen solid. It would be lot easier to open some small hatch and plug some charger in.
Timo wrote, “[Given high-capacity energy storage systems in future BEV models] BES would simply have too few customers to be viable business. ”
I disagree, provided that the swappable battery modules are designed correctly. If a single module could be lifted by a person, if the modules were designed so that a leased battery condition-checker/charger could determine their current state of quality, if access to the battery compartment(s) were simple and straightforward, not requiring special garage tools or equipment, and if the price of an individual module were right, then pretty much anyone could invest in a few starter modules, charge them, and begin swapping modules on demand. This could be done at present-day gas-stations, kwik-e-marts, supermarkets, COSTCO, business shacks next to hotels, motels, and restaurants, and even out of the back of vans and trucks. Overhead would be low, so the price for the service could be reasonable yet still include a decent profit margin. Battery swapping service would, in most places, be more of a sideline than a main business, although it could be the main attraction at a dedicated swap-station along a well-traveled freeway or interstate highway. If demand for module-swapping dropped too much or disappeared altogether, the small-time operators could sell their module inventory to a bigger, busier swapper, and return the condition-checker/charger to the leasing company: a smooth and painless exit out of the business.
Having cut overhead as much as possible, as well as the cost to enter and the penalty for leaving the business, the battery-swapping service provider would seek to have a location (or other way to serve customers, such as out of a roving van) that permits as many customers on a regular basis as necessary to achieve break-even and/or profit. Siting the business along or near a major road, or adopting the “roach coach” approach, taking modules to customers on demand or along a pre-determined route, could probably achieve the necessary business volume.
I’m not saying that any particular battery-swapping business would be viable: there are too many variables. But by the same token, I don’t think you can flat-out dismiss the potential for swap “station” success. A lot hinges on the factors I mentioned above, so let’s wait and see what the modules and battery-compartment designs look like before writing off the battery swapping approach. Once all the facts are on the table, I may agree with you — or you with me!
I think your comparison of the roadster with the 911 is a little unfair. I don’t doubt your feelings and practical experience, but 200mph and 125mph cars are different animals altogether, even when they are based on similar technologies, which is certainly not the case here. Maybe choosing the right tool for the job means not buying a 200mph sports car for use as a daily driver on slow public roads? It can’t be easy to make objective choices in an affluent country where people love to drive their off-road look SUVs exclusively on the road.
It’s great that you have found your ideal vehicle in the roadster. Now show me that the battery will last at least ten years and will cost less than $10K to replace, and I will gladly buy one too.
FINALLY! How many years has it been since I have been on the Roadster watch? Today at 4:07pm, I finally saw my first Roadster in traffic! It was just entering Santa Cruz, at the point where Highway 17 turns into Ocean Street (across from Denny’s). I was pointed in the opposite direction, waiting in the left-turn lane to get onto Highway 1 North. Looking across the intersection to the Hwy 17 South lane, I noticed what seemed at first to be a silver Lotus, but then I caught the triangular logo shield at the front of the hood, and my heart literally skipped a beat. Could it be? The day was nice and warm, and my windows were down. The southbound lane got to go before my left-turn light turned green, so I was able to turn my head and keep watching the silver car as it proceeded south by the other side of the median. I could hear the slight whine of the electric motor as it accelerated, almost imperceptible amidst the louder ICE vehicles going the same direction. And as I watched the rear end of the car speed away, I read: T E S L A, and noted the last three letters of the license plate: M-A-G.
So Mr. or Ms. license-plate something-MAG in the Silver Roadster, I just wanted you to know that because of your decision to drive to Santa Cruz today, I was able to cross off something that had been on my list of things to do literally for years! “Spot Roadster in Traffic”: CHECK! Thank you!
James;
The Roadster battery pack weighs about 900 lbs. Feeling strong today?
The only swap method possible is automated drive-thru. It’s been done in as little as 40 seconds.
There aren’t many places to plug in an electric vehicle on the streets of my town in Jersey City, NJ. Are you planning to come out with a removable battery that you can take into your house or apartment to plug in?
Brian H: It has long been known that the heavy and bulky Roadster pack was not designed with swapping in mind and I have never advocated that it be routinely swapped, though if somebody wants to offer an automated Roadster battery pack swapping service, be my guest. Current model Roadsters will never account for more than an infinitesimal portion of the total EV fleet, and it just doesn’t seem cost-effective for anyone outside of Tesla dealerships or authorized service centers to invest in the capital equipment necessary to automate Roadster battery pack replacement. That is to say, it makes more sense to replace the pack because it is chemically exhausted and needs to be replaced entirely, than because you need a quick “fill up.” The Model S, on the other hand, is said to be designed to allow for battery pack swapping. Other EV designs mentioned in the news lately also provide for battery swapping. I’m supposing that the swappable packs that the designers have in mind are themselves composed of smaller, standard modules, each of which might be light enough to swap manually, or with the aid of commonly available garage apparatus. We won’t know for sure, until more details of those future designs are revealed. But I hope any swapping procedure accommodates and expedites not just the needs of service and maintenance, but also the needs of long-haul travelers.
James, problem with manual battery swapping is that battery will stay heavy even in future. If you are planning swap stations without paid service people those swappable batteries need to be light and accessible enough that some fragile grandma or some handicapped person can swap them. And then it would take many minutes to swap all modules which would be rather heavy exercise even with individual modules were light. Unless you think of swapping only few of them at any one time. That would then leave you with few full batteries and few near empty which would require in-car charge adjustment which would take some time to happen.
Of course if you are planning to swap only few of them then regular charging could very well be faster:
compare:
5-10 secs to plug it in, wait (go drink some coffee maybe), 5-10 secs to plug it out. Pay.
vs
Open high voltage protective battery casing, maybe wait for them to cool for swapping, start piling individual battery modules out of the car, carry them to swap-point, take replacements, carry them to car, place them to car one by one, close high voltage protective casing. Pay.
I think only way to make swapping any good is with robotics and then you need to ask which would be better: use that same robotics to charge car with huge amps, or swap batteries. You know my opinion.
Hey James;
For my own personal preferences, I’d prefer to take the bulky non-swappable higher stored power battery pack over a lesser weight swapable lower total electrical storage battery pack. That would include the 300 mile range which is an option for the Model S. The more power stored, the better
I’m of the group of consumers who would rather see battery technology keep innovating and advancing. I can envision a time when you can take your electric vehicle on an extended vacation without having to fuel at all. Then fuel at home between vacation trips effectively “topping off the tank”. Combine that with a home produced that is solar friendly and it’s possible to completely move away from the services of both the gas station and the utility companies.
In short: I want to be independent where possible. With solar panels providing my home energy needs including vehicle requirements, I can’t imagine a more independent situation where energy is required.
The concept of setting up an infrastructure to swap battery packs produces a certain level of dependence on said services. More so if the battery electricity volumes are produced in sufficiently decreased amounts to “force” people to use said services. If you don’t believe companies would use such a tactic, perhaps an examination into the limited battery storage used for the main vehicle manufacturers needs to be done. For example, the Chevy Volt. Limited to 40 miles for it’s battery supply then you convert to fossil fuels to power the vehicle. With all the engineering expertise working for Chevy, how can a start up newbie like Tesla Motors produce such a drastically higher quality, more advanced vehicle? The only reasonable answer is that: Chevy simply doesn’t want to!
The reality is that most companies want the consumer to keep coming to them frequently for services. It ensures continued bottom line income. I much prefer Tesla Motor’s method of innovation to provide consumers with real choice that gives them back a measure of freedom and independence. There’s always more population being born. Always future customers to sell to. One does not have to produce a product designed to fail to keep the business operating into the future.
On that note: If there are those consumers who prefer to be able to swap and are willing to give up total independence for partial independence, then by all means it should be an option if a business sees enough demand to provide the service. Greater choice means far less likelyhood Society will ever be so dependent on a set of providers in the future.
One thing to consider with regards swapping though. There’s a general rule engineers know well:
“more moving parts = higher maintenance”
If your battery sits in your car for it’s life and is swapped only when depleted to the point of no longer being useful to the owner, all the connections holding it in place and such will see minimal wear and tear. If your battery is swapped every 150 miles, all those same connections are going to see a whole lot more wear and tear which will increase the total overall costs of maintaining your electric vehicle. Some of those service providers will do an excellent job, others will do a poor job. The ones that do a poor job will help increase your maintenance costs. Just something to consider
Timo and Roger: Three comments on the swapping thing, because you two seem to argue against something I am not proposing.
First, weight: Conventional battery weight will continue to go down. And if ultracapacitors (such as EEStor’s or anyone else’s) arrive on the scene, they stand to be quite a bit lighter than even the most energy dense batteries today. But the big solution to weight is modularity; see below.
Second, modularity: I would be disappointed to find that an allegedly swappable battery pack allowing decent range were supplied as an integrated, single entity (e.g., just a more standardized, “plug and play” version of the existing ESS). Instead, I would expect to see several smaller, lighter standardized modules ganged together in an intelligent power-management subsystem, as hot-swappable hard drives are ganged together in a RAID array “no-fail” server. Call them D-cells on steroids if you wish. When one goes bad (or, in the case of batteries, discharges), you would simply have the option of replacing it and leaving the rest untouched. These modules would be light enough for most people to heft without difficulty (bag of groceries, sack of potatoes, spare-tire class hefting — maybe not suitable for kids or somebody’s granny, but how many times will kids or grannies be making the long-haul trips or be caught in the emergency situations that would require battery swapping?). No one module would determine the entire autonomy of the vehicle. On the other hand, autonomy could be increased by increments (maybe by 10 or 12 miles at a time), depending on the number of modules that someone wanted to swap in any one session.
Third, common employment of swapping: I’ve said many times that I don’t expect swapping to be anything other than an alternative fill-up procedure, for long-hauls or special cases, which is why any approach to swapping must provide for a low-overhead business model in order to be viable. If the modules are (relatively) small, standardized, and readily accessible; and if people can start viewing the modules as “disposable” (actually, recyclable with a returnable deposit, perhaps), then a very workable business module is possible, which can accommodate as many “swap stations” as the growing EV fleet requires, and just as importantly, can shed those stations easily and painlessly as expected increases in battery capacity and/or longevity materialize. In terms of the “average” swapping session (even/especially in emergencies), the motorist would replace only a few of the modules, enough to get to the destination or the next stopping point for purposes of rest and longer-term recharging (motel, restaurant, etc.).
Bonus comment #4: If the value in having standardized battery modules were simply in how they might allow for battery swapping as a source of fuel in-transit, I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about the idea as I am. But to the extent that these modules can be mass-produced as commodities, their installation and removal made easy and straightforward, even without special tools, and their size can be reasonably small, there are also potential benefits for design, manufacturing, and maintenance. In design for example, it might not be necessary for a power storage system to occupy a single, contiguous space. In manufacturing, factories could count on multiple sources of the commoditized modules, as well as predictable prices for them. In maintenance, upgrades or replacements of the energy storage systems could be handled by a wider range of personnel, as excessive personal strength or special machinery would perhaps not be necessary to do the job. I’m not saying that these or other benefits are GUARANTEED by the modular approach of course, but going modular and swappable is a way to open the door to enjoying them, more or less “for free” if the modular design is done with care.
James Anderson Merritt
First point: EEStor already is losing to best batteries in labs, so it would not be viable unless it is a lot cheaper. Weight will go down. Agreed.
Second point: Modularity is good. For repair purposes and many others. In fact even Roadster battery pack consist several “modules”. However modularity doesn’t remove the fact that you would need to swap several heavy modules before it does make any sense, and that is high-voltage huge amperage system you are meddling with. Enough power for small bomb that need protecting from accidents. It would make easily manually replaceable modules extremely hard to produce. There are also tear and wear like Roger S mentioned. That also means that no matter how you do it it won’t be easy, and it would take time to replace those individual modules. Because it takes time ordinary charging might well be faster. Even for long haul. If you only replace part of the battery pack you need to wait for charge to even out to rest of the pack. Otherwise you might get car with badly limited performance. If you swap enough for maybe 100miles that is something like 25kWh. That is 50 kg of 500Wh/kg future battery density batteries. Five modules. 25kWh can be charged in less than half an hour even with low power system. You might win something like 15 minutes. Or less. Or not at all.
Third point: As an charge alternative, I don’t see any other way than robotics for swapping battery. Any other way it is slow, difficult, increases wear and tear and so on. I just don’t see any business model for large scale swap stations that could be viable because 1) swapping would be rare 2) batteries are relatively expensive and you need to have storage for them 3) you need chargers just like charging points would have so you don’t save anything there.
As you say battery swapping could be useful for emergency situations, like tow-companies to help cars that have depleted their battery pack in middle of nowhere (OTOH fast battery to battery charging could be used there too) and maybe special cases like fire department fire trucks (huge battery pack needed, and instant readiness is required, so robotics there to fast swap battery at garage).
But for large scale battery swapping station infrastructure? I doubt that that will ever happen. Even roadside charging will be so rare that high price fast chargers would be too much to many places to invest not to mention much more expensive swap station. Instead slower “few hours charging” would be much more common (80% of 160miles in 45 minutes would be 1.5 hour for 256 miles. Enough for me if I have 600 miles to star with if I ever need that).
When will there be a cheaper version of the S model? I love that the price is half or the roadster but I still cant afford a $50,000 car.