A Jaw-Dropping Ride, Batteries Included Peak Oil Garage By Warren Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 25, 2009; Page G01 Warren Brown takes the $109,000 electric-powered Tesla Roadster for a spin.
sweet looking car... more i look at it, the more i am tempted, but would have to win the lottery first... guess i wait for BYD or Zenn instead...
If Tesla Motors goes bankrupt, it will be a long time before anyone attempts to produce such an amazing vehicle. So the car will likely become an instant collectors item. Good luck ever getting one below $100,000.
Please don't get me and my warped humour wrong, I want nothing more than for Tesla to win out and be very successful. Unfortunately my income precludes me from owning such a car, I'd love to own one but unfortunately I won't be able to afford one. I love the car and the concept, I love the things you guys are doing at Peak Oil Garage too, those electric RAV4s should fly out the door.
Tesla ain't going bankrupt. Investment capital is on hold since W and his cronies bankrupted the nation, but Tesla has a product that a lot of people with big bucks want. Pat may have to wait 10 years for the current crop of Roadsters to be old enough to sell for $10,000 but it could happen. An old junker Roadster with 200,000 miles on it and the batteries are only good for 50 miles instead of 245 and the paint is all chipping. And the new ones go zero to 60 in 3 seconds instead of 4 and have a 500 mile range. Could happen.
if Tesla failed that would be unfortunate, but if the data gathered to build the car and the real life user data from owners is also lost, then that would be tragic. almost as tragic as something like having a car company come out with an EV, then have that car company destroy all the cars along with the data gathered while that car was on the....oh wait, this is starting to sound familiar...hmmm?? where have i heard this before ?? anyway, that would never happen is a sensible environment right? we would take that data from Tesla's roadster and use it build on making a better car or developing a better battery or charge monitoring system or whatever right?? **edit** and as far as that used roadster for $10,000... ya, toss a new $20,000 battery pack in there HELL YES, i want it!!! its not like the engine is ready to go out on it, probably toss another 5-10,000 to redo the suspension, brakes, bearing (what little there is) and you have a new car, and daniel, with that carbon fiber body, i am pretty sure rust is not a factor
I am actually very concerned about Tesla. If they don't get the government loan to build the Sedan, I don't know if they can survive on only the Roadster. That is a very low volume car and they cannot spread their overhead costs around on those low margins. As for the RAV4 EV conversions, I am hopeful that the market accepts them. The first one should be done in May 2009. If it sells and it is breakeven or better, then we will do 6 more and get some cost savings from doing that many at the same time. That will hopefully be our profit. Peak Oil Garage is merely my blog. Our company is The Green Car Company.
I got a ride in a Roadster some time back. Two complaints: It's too small, and when it's stopped after some amount of driving, the refrigerator is loud. I expected Prius-quiet. My Porsche will be twice as roomy with half the performance, and for me that's a very good trade-off. And the LiFePO4 batteries do not require liquid cooling.
