Tesla Motors To Suspend Roadster Production 401
Wyatt Earp writes with news that a recent SEC filing from Tesla Motors revealed the company plans to stop production on its electric Roadster (and the Roadster Sport as well) in 2011. This will leave the automaker without any cars to sell until the launch of its Model S sedan (financed in part by $465 million in DoE loans) in 2012. Tesla plans to resume production of Roadster models "at least a year" after the Model S arrives. From Wired's Autopia blog:
"'As a result, we anticipate that we may generate limited, if any, revenue from selling electric vehicles after 2011 until the launch of the planned model S,' the company says in the SEC filing. That may not be a problem if S production starts on plan and goes off without a hitch, but if Tesla hits any snags, things could get ugly fast — a point it concedes in the filing. 'The launch of the Model S could be delayed for a number of reasons and any such delays may be significant and would extend the period in which we would generate limited, if any, revenues from sales of our electric vehicles.'"
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Informative)
Or Lotus pulled the platform
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, then by that standard there are damn few companies worldwide (and none in the US) producing viable ICE-powered cars.
Re:Quixotic business plan (Score:2, Informative)
Haven't we covered this myth already? I think the rebuttal goes like this: Oh, shucks, EVs will only suit the needs of 95% of the population. If I need to expound, let me know, and I will just ignore you because you're just a troll; if you really cared about this issue, you'd get this already.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uh oh (Score:3, Informative)
With the electric car, when your battery is dead, it's dead and you're going to be spending hours, or perhaps all night, waiting for it to recharge.
The car in this story will do a full charge in 45 minutes not hours.
Re:Killing yourself with good intentions (Score:5, Informative)
You can't build a city by burning it to the ground. You need at the very least a Granary and a Marketplace so that you can grow your population while making income. This allows you to finance all the other fun stuff you want to do like developing war trolls or building sorcerer's guilds. Without the basic income stream, you're just going to get screwed when some bear rushes in and eats all your citizens because you don't have even a single halberdier around to guard the town.
This may be the best Master of Magic analogy I've ever seen. (btw if you've never played it, get DOSBox and a second-hand copy of the game pronto)
Re:Quixotic business plan (Score:4, Informative)
You forgot a few things:
a) Electric engines are on average about 4 times as efficient as petrol ones. If we use your numbers that then implies you need 11kg of battery to replace a kg of petrol.
b) Electric engines are much lighter than ICEs, so some of the weight gain is compensated for this way.
c) Electric cars in principle needs no transmission, gearbox, catalyst, exhaust system, raidator, starter engine etc... that knocks off a heck of a lot of weight.
Basically when you take into consideration the weight reduction from the much simpler drive train of an EV it is ore than enough to add in hundreds of kilograms of batteries. The problem is cost, not weight/energy ratio.
Re:Crazy question to the crowd (Score:4, Informative)
The Tesla S has been designed with the capability of swapping the battery pack in 5 minutes, as well as a 45 minute quick charge at a suitable charging facility (fits pretty well with the idea of having lunch or shopping while the battery is charged).
Re:Uh oh (Score:2, Informative)
For upper middle class and higher families, it might not be a bad idea. Then again, most of them already spend more than they earn, so it is wise to buy an even more expensive vehicle, especially if they aren't going to drive it long enough for the fuel savings to pay for the difference?
Does that mean electric cars don't have a place? Absolutely not... there definitely is a market for such cars. It's just not as broad as many of the promoters of electric vehicles want to portray it as.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)
And Th!nk just demonstrated 15 minutes for 80% charging. Which the Subaru R1e supports, too. And the Leaf supports 30 minute charging for the same. The BYD F3DM takes 10 minutes to 80%, and the E6, 10 minutes to 50%. And on and on.
Rapid charging is becoming a reality. Yes, rapid chargers are going to be rarer than slow chargers, as they're more expensive (similar to gas stations on a per-pump price), and about the size of a vending machine. But we don't need them to be as common as gas stations, because they're only really needed for when you go on long trips. In your everyday life, you start each day with a full charge and never have to even think, "Gee, do I need to get gas today?", then have to go out of your way, sometimes in adverse weather, to go fill up.
Hydrogen nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
1) Modern automotive-style li-ion battery lifespans are similar to transmission lifespans or other vehicle component lifespans. Fuel cells, on the other hand, have about half the lifespan of said batteries.
2) It's not that li-ion batteries are difficult to recycle; it's that the automotive-style li-ions are nontoxic and the raw materials in them are cheap, so there's not much incentive to recycle them.
3) Hydrogen generally costs $3-$15/kg, with the lower end from natural gas and the upper end from electrolysis.
4) Hydrogen is *not* the solution if you want power; fuel cells are priced per watt, not per watt hour.
5) The hydrogen cycle in a fuel cell vehicle with electricity as a source is 1/4 to 1/2 as efficient as that in a BEV. So no matter what your power source, you'll be requiring 2-4 times as much of it. Even if natural gas is the source, EVs are still usually 20-50% more efficient.
6) If you want to talk about resources, unlike EVs, fuel cells *do* use rare elements (in particular platinum).
7) FCVs cost about an order of magnitude more than EVs. For example, there's only one FCV available today that's not subsidized, and that's Toyota's FCHV-adv. It's by all standards a seemingly normal SUV, in terms of power, range, etc. But it costs over $8k a month to lease. One year of leasing of it would nearly pay for a Tesla Roadster outright -- a carbon fiber supercar that does 0-60 in under 4 seconds.
8) FCVs *require* infrastructure to do anything. EVs only require new infrastructure for away-from-home recharging, and a heck of a lot less of it.
I can keep going if you'd like. There's a reason why our Secretary of Energy tried to kill off our fuel cell programs. Tried. Congress forced him to keep them going, mainly due to amendments from people in districts who had been receiving the fuel cell research money.
Re:BEAUTIFY SLASHDOT! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:BEAUTIFY SLASHDOT! (Score:2, Informative)
I take exception to that. I'm a moronic douche bag.