Tesla Sets EV 313 Mile Distance Record

First, I have absolutely no interest in owning a Tesla. My interest is just that basically, I enjoy knowing about automobiles.

I did a "google" on Tesla, and found their web-site. But I still have questions:

They are very expensive are they not?
I take it there is a long waiting list. How many have been made, and how many can they produce a month?
Do they meet all the fed requirements for safety? bumpers? side impact?
Do they have the creature comforts of A/C, power steering, brakes, windows?
Do they have a dealer network? How about warranty work and service?

The battery must be gigantic .... if the future Prius PHEV can only go 13 miles.

Just curious.

 

A Roadster will set you back $110,000+.

The wait is not long. I believe orders take a couple months or so. There were 2 on the showroom floor in NY earlier this year. I believe 900 have been built.

The car is street legal.

They have power accessories. Think about it. Why should a roadster have air conditioning?

Tesla sells the cars directly. No dealers. There is a store in NY on 25th St to handle sales & service. They can also dispatch a mechanic.

All EVs have "gigantic" batteries.

 

Thanks, JimN,

As I said, I was just curious. Certainly a nice looking vehicle.

 

Amazingly cheap if you compare it to gasoline cars that it can beat at the track. In other words, this is not a family car, and can't be compared in price to a Honda Civic. The people who buy these cars don't live paycheck to paycheck. For the Average driver, they're expensive. Relative to the performance, they are cheap.

I'm not sure where the waiting list is now, but they passed the 1000 mark quite a while back. Don't know where they are today. Last I heard, they were making 10 per week.

Of course. Couldn't sell it in the US otherwise. It is not a kit car. It is the first new car company to sell a full-on production vehicle in countless decades.

Yes. Oh... and the big creature comfort of astonishing acceleration.

This is a work in progress. There should be plenty of info (on all these questions, really) on the web site.

The battery is NOT gigantic. I guess it depends on your frame of reference though. Anything "gigantic" would not fit in this car! The fact is that the Prius PHEV is pathetic.

 

Actually, about one and a half decades? It just seems like forever.

The battery takes up most of the car, by both weight and volume. Batteries are the sticking point for EVs these days.

Agreed!!!

As has been discussed often, the Roadster is a car for the very rich, because that's the easiest market for a new company to break into. Future plans will be for an expensive sedan (think BMW or Mercedes class, but electric) and then moving down (in price and luxury) to the family sedan market.

 

What did I miss 15 years ago?

Weight, yes. Volume? What are you including in the volume of the car? Passenger compartment? Everything under the skin? Nowhere near half the volume in any metric that I can come up with. Obviously the battery assembly is larger than you'd use in your flashlight, but compared to EVs of yesterday? Compared to the range available? I don't call it "big" much less gigantic. But like I said, it all depends on your frame of reference.

 

Here's a naked Roadster.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/01/detroit09interiors_22.jpg

The black box with the orange hose on it is the battery box. If the car were only 2x the volume of that, it would make a Smart Car look huge.

 

I guess that shows what you can do with the most expensive battery types - pretty sure they're not using lead-acid in there...

 

Isn't that about when you bought your Rav4EV from a major auto maker? And they were still available for a couple of years after that? And GM and Chevy were selling EVs? Not really countless decades ago. Except for the folks running our economy, who cannot count to one.

I saw a Roadster battery pack outside the car. The pack is bigger than the car. Well, almost. Okay, so I'm exaggerating. But there's zero space behind the seats, and a trunk about the size of a deck of cards. Okay, I'm exaggerating again. But not by much.

Actually, they're using common laptop batteries. My three-legged clown car has more expensive batteries than the Tesla, which is why mine do not need a refrigerator built into the car to cool the battery pack. (My pack isn't more expensive. My batteries are more expensive per kW.)

 

I don't mean to be a jerk or start a flame war, but I feel compelled to point out that if you found their website then you've found all the answers to your questions. They're all answered on their site.

 

Pssst. You didn't read what I wrote. Here it is again, with the important part in bold:
" It is the first new car company to sell a full-on production vehicle in countless decades."

Toyota isn't new. GM isn't new. There are no other new car companies selling real cars. Tesla is a new car company. I'm not sure enough people give them credit for that.

They must have worked some magic miniturization mojo on it since then.

 

Oops! :embarassed: I misread your post as the first new full-on production EV in countless decades. You gotta forgive me. I'm getting old. Pretty soon I'll be eligible for senior discounts.

OTOH, With the dawn of the automobile only about a century back, that's hardly "countless decades," Ten is pretty countable.

 

Let's not even talk about the getting old business. I'm starting to lose my cell phone about five times per day now. :sigh:

Countless is of course my way of saying, "I choose not to count them, nor be held responsible for coming up with the wrong number."

In the meantime, I just read where GM is tooling up to refresh their full-size truck line! Yay. Oops, OT. Sorry.

 

I got the opportunity to drive a Tesla Roadster when the 'North American Electric Summer' tour came to town yesterday. All I can say is, wow that is quite a car!

At one point I found myself stuck at a red light illegally in the 'bus only' lane with a Trimet employee yelling at me from the curb that I was going to get an 'expensive ticket'. When the light turned, I was able to effortlessly accelerate past all the other traffic to get over and out of trouble. An impressive machine.

We only got 15 minutes each for our test drives and my appointment was at 2:30. I asked the Tesla guy how many times the car had been recharged since the rides started at 9am. He said 'It hasn't and it won't be until we get back to the shop'. Not bad at all. So you see, range is not a problem so long as you can spend $109,000.

 

I test Drove a Tesla Roadster recently and it was a mistake! the car was so quick and quiet it was ridiculous. I want to wait for the Model S, but the Roadster is available now!..... I have a couple of photos of the roadster before I went out for a test drive