Looks Like Tesla Have Cracked It

[hedgerley]

One in the eye for all the naysayers - 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22459631

 

[Bibs]

How much has that cost to get there though?

[Vulcan Grey]

I've seen 5 Tesla Model S sedans around Boulder Colorado in the last 2 weeks!  Gorgeous car... And I hate sedans...

 

Elon Musk's brother Kimbal lives here, owns a restaurant.

[GavinT]

Was in the Dallas and Austin areas not too long ago and I must have seen a couple of dozen.

[TBD]

Can't see the real value. The way I drive I'll get less than 300 km range before having to recharge. That won't even get me to my customer!

 

Might be a different situation in the speed limited world, but there must be a reason why no German carmaker is really commited to ecars.

[alan]

Can't see the real value. The way I drive I'll get less than 300 km range before having to recharge. That won't even get me to my customer!

 

Might be a different situation in the speed limited world, but there must be a reason why no German carmaker is really commited to ecars.

 

Those are fair comments.  Most people drive way under 300 miles / 500 km a day but for those who drive more per day it does not make sense.

 

For those who drive less per day and can charge at home overnight its a really interesting option.  Few countries have unrestricted autobahns so 125mph top speed is enough.  I prefer acceleration to top speed as you can legally use it all the time and the Model S out accelerates an Evora S despite being being a big 7 seat car.  Also having done 30,000 electric miles the simple fact its that cars with electric motors are just nicer and more fun to drive which is a strange thing for a petrol head to be saying!

 

What excites me is the rapid improvement in technology.  Roadster range is 200 mies, Model S is 300 miles for less money, in a few years it will be 500. Charging times are dropping - 100 miles range in a few mins at fast chargers.  Acceleration is limited more by traction than motor power / torque anything - the Rimac Concept one is silly money but can out drag a Veyron.

[Rick Edwards]

what about all the people who's houses do not have driveways or access to power? will there be miles of cable across the pavements everywhere? My house's drive way is too steep to actually put a car on it that is not a 4x4 so I wont be ordering a Tesla soon.

[hedgerley]

EVs will only play a small (but increasing) part of the overall personal transportation paradigm. We have long had a choice about what we buy to get around and we all have various restrictions based on need/budget/family/location/garage size/driveways etc. etc. What irritates me is the dismissive tone of some who say EVs have no future when Tesla has shown it can be done and there is a market.

 

As for the cable issue, induction plate charging (as demonstrated on the RR EV concept built/engineered by Lotus last year) means the car only has to be positioned over a small plate buried in the road/driveway/garage to get a decent charge (and no the cat won't get cooked if it sneaks under the car for a snooze). There is talk of local authorities actually building these into the highway, say on the approach to traffic lights so everyone gets a boost every time they stop at a red light. The business models, charging (forgive the pun, I mean £s) mechanisms and the politics will be more difficult than the technology to sort out.

 

As Alan says the advances in technology make it very  interesting. My first mobile phone cost over £2000, could store up to 6 numbers and had a talk-time of 30 minutes. It took over 10 hours to fully charge and the WWW didn't exist. So some on guys, give EV's a break. They will get better.

 

This is what Just-Auto has to say on Tesla's recent news:

 

Well done to Tesla, a company that has developed credible products and technology. Long hard road. The travails of the start-ups can be a little bit misleading though. The electric vehicle sector and the technologies being developed are still at a relatively early stage. Incremental improvements to things like battery performance and range, charging infrastructure, are coming. Unit costs will eventually start to fall. Electric vehicles will find a market niche as a part of the automotive powertrain mix, especially in metropolitan areas. How big will that niche be and on what timescale? Those are the big questions exercising OEM product planners, but there is the point. What the big OEMs do will ultimately matter much more to the sector than the problems currently being experienced by start-ups.

 

And if there is any doubt as to Tesla's ambition, they have just poached Chris Porritt from Aston Martin as VP of Vehicle Engineering. This is the man who led the teams responsible for the One-77 as well as the entire VH platform range of cars and has been at AM since 1997. So let's give Tesla a break as well.

 

http://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/about/press/releases/tesla-hires-aston-martin%E2%80%99s-vehicle-engineering-leader?goback=%2Egde_3143673_member_239849081

Edited May 13, 2013 by hedgerley

[Vulcan Grey]

Hmm..

 

 

As if Tesla needed any more good news this month, first-quarter sales are in and the electric Model S outsold the Mercedes S-class, Audi A8 and BMW 7-series, according to “CNN Money.” In the first three months of 2013, Tesla sold 4,750 sedans while Mercedes sold 3,077 of the S-class, BMW sold 2,338 of the 7-series and Audi sent 1,462 A8s out of the dealership.

Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20130513/carnews/130519937#ixzz2TCCPzmc5 
Follow us: @AutoweekUSA on Twitter | AutoweekUSA on Facebook

 

[chandrew]

Hmm.. and a quote about outselling the S class, A8 etc.

 

Is the Model S really in the same class?  Size-wise it's about the same as a 5 series or A6 and here at least priced at the same level as the most expensive models of those cars (I guess there is some overlap).

 

In Switzerland the official import stats puts the Panamera in the same class as the S, A8 etc and it outsells everything else in the market.

 

Anyway, I think it's fab and when I look at the trips that I do I'm probably only talking 5-10 a year for which it'd struggle.  Most of those are through Germany to the NL but if there was a fast charging at Karlsruhe sort of area I might be able to do that with some planning and a coffee stop.  The guys in the Zurich dealership keep trying to get my family out in one but I know it would be a slippery slope.

[hedgerley]

A good mate of mine has been in Zurich for a couple of years Andrew and he too has been tempted. He wandered into the showroom there enough times to get a couple of free tickets to last years Geneva Motor Show courtesy of Tesla. I cashed in some airmiles and headed over for the day and had a guided tour around the Model S. And an hour upstairs on the Lotus stand, which was great.

 

The entire trip cost me a cup of coffee and a light lunch. Which was nice.

[chandrew]

They've built their national sales centre in Winterthur which is a stone's throw from us.  I expect them to sell like hot cakes here.  I see more of the roadsters on the road than I do elises / exiges.  I think CH, NL and Norway are the big markets for Tesla in Europe.

 

We don't get subsidies on electric cars and tax is canton dependent.  Here in Zurich we won't pay road tax which is something like CHF600 a year for the Lotus from memory.  I worked out the cost of 'fuelling' if done at night on our premium, renewables-only electricity contract was about CHF17.  Our usual family car costs about CHF90-100 to fill (it needs 98RON and drinks it at an astonishing rate for a small, lightish car).

 

Map of self-reported orders here.