Tesla Delivers First Batch of Model S Electric Sedans 311
After years of tantalizing pictures and promises, on Friday the first 10 Model S sedans left Tesla's Fremont, California factory. This first handful of the new S has long been spoken for, and the cars have been delivered (or are on the way) to buyers around the U.S. Even with tax-supported subsidies, the new sedan isn't cheap: the subsidized base price is just under $50,000. Still, 10,000 people have put down five grand apiece for the chance to own one. Wired has a brief piece on what the S is like to drive. What's a 160-miles-per-charge, $50k car worth to you?
Re:Why can't they extend the range? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:miles per charge? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla is starting high-end and going towards low. In 2014, they are expected to introduce their sub 30K electric car. Unlike the garbage that is out there, it will likely be a 4 seater, and have decent performance and torque (i.e. 0-60 under 6 if not 5) and a range of around 120 miles.
If 160 miles is not far enough, then for 10K each bump, you can change to 220 or even 300. With the 300 mile range, you also get the improved motor that will drop your 0-60 in the 4's. However, if you can not afford, then you are right. Stay with a gas car or wait another year for a Natural Gas car. For now.
Sigh. Most ppl drive in the day times. So, installing panel do little for you, unless you have one that works based on night time charging. Regardless, electricity is less than $1.00 per gallon of gas equivalence (for most of USA, it is
Very little maintenance costs.
Re:If you`re buying one of these . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Note this is for the base model. The top end gets closer to a conventional combustion vehicle for not much more than a higher end sedan, and the car performs like a high end sorts sedan. This price is actually one of the better ones out there considering its capabilities, and it's capable of traveleling farther than most electrics on the market at the high end (300 miles per charge).
0 to 60 times in 5.7 seconds.
Not bad at all...
Re:Cost per charge (Score:5, Informative)
I make it as about four cents, assuming you pay the national average for power. But, a Prius is not the proper comparison. A BMW 5 series is about right. Really, the question is whether the quiet ride and performance is worth the lack of range - fuel costs don't matter to these people.
Re:If you`re buying one of these . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why can't they extend the range? (Score:4, Informative)
The Tesla Roadster has a "traditional" automobile transmission, and indeed it even had a variable speed gearbox (two speed plus reverse). The torque ranges of an electric motor played hell on the transmission and nearly killed Tesla Motors as a company because the company who was developing the transmission failed to deliver a product lasting more than a couple thousand miles. That it was an unusual engineering domain because it involved an AC variable frequency induction motor instead of an internal combustion engine is where the problem came up. In retrospect Tesla should have concentrated on that transmission as a critical development path item and perhaps even moved its development in-house (which eventually did happen anyway). The failure of this transmission is what cost Martin Eberhard his job as CEO, and pushed Elon Musk into a much more active role in the company.
One of the reasons for having multiple speeds is that at extremely high RPM rates you start to get some additional performance issues, where the motor starts to act as a powerful gyroscope, making it difficult to turn the vehicle and impacting the handling of the vehicle as well as pushing limits on the equipment when you get to very high speeds that can result in a mechanical breakdown. There are legitimate reasons to be looking for a multi-speed transmission even for electric vehicle, even though you don't need to have nearly so many gear ratios. As for how many electric vehicle manufacturers are building multi-speed transmissions is another story entirely.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to pitch in on this one. I live in Finland, city of Tamepere. we have ~200k living in the city. This is the site of our public transportation: http://aikataulut.tampere.fi/?lang=en [tampere.fi] (fully functional english version, we have a lot of exchange students and foreign workers due to being an industrial town). There is also a mobile version of the site and most stops have a printed upcode barcode that you can scan with your phone into an app to help with seeing timetables on the fly.
Full site has the following:
1. Per bus line and per stop timetable (which tends to be accurate within ~2 minutes).
2. Journey planner, where you simply input your start point and end point and set your desired departure or arrival time, and software will provide you with several routes that fit your criteria. You can also set details, like to ignore certain bus lines when doing route calculation or how much margin of error you want to switching lanes.
3. Traffic monitor of GPS-fitted busses (actually most if not all busses have trackers, but it seems only a few are enabled to broadcast to public at any given time).
Public transit itself here is excellent. The only times I ever need to use a car is when I leave the city or am in a big hurry. This in spite of the city being so big that it was classified as a "village" by early EU rules due to having extremely low population density, often considered a bane of public transportation. Night traffic also exists, timed with shift changes in bigger working places (for example shift changes for central hospitals or major factories).
Every bus has been equipped with GPS for a while now. Bus essentially has a notification board inside set to be visible from everywhere in the bus that displays the next stop's name and projected time of arrival as well as current time. Busses are modern Volvo and Scania models, fully air conditioned and equipped with heaters so they're comfortable through hot summers and cold winters. There are many other little allowances for comfort of people, like NFC tickets (you just wave your card through a NFC reader and it shows you the balance on the ticket in front of the driver where you enter, while people exiting the bus do so through middle and rear doors).
Pricing is reasonable by local standard: you can enter any bus for an hour after purchasing the ticket which costs 2.50EUR. By using preloaded tickets, you shave almost a euro off the price. You can also get a monthly card for something around 50EUR, and there are significant discounts for students children and elderly. They also have "workplace" tickets specially tailored for workplaces to buy for their workers.
We have bus lanes throughout city centre, which means that you will avoid most of the congestion especially during rush hour by taking a bus.
In general, if you want to make it work, it can be made to work and work well to the point where even a low density 200k city can have public transit good enough to allow to not even have a car if you don't want to own one. It's one of the major infrastructural advantages here, of you move with your spouse, one car for the family is more then enough, and a single person can go without a car alltogether in many cases. There have actually been calculations done that it's cheaper for an average single student/worker to have a bus card and grab a (very expensive high quality service legally mandated local monopoly) taxi for those few times that bus tables do not suit him/her.