Tesla Model S Named 'Car of the Year' 303
A reader writes with news that Automobile Magazine has named the all-electric Tesla Model S its Car of the Year. Quoting:
"We weren't expecting much from the Tesla other than some interesting dinner conversation as we considered 'real' candidates like the Subaru BRZ and the Porsche Boxster. In fact, the Tesla blew them, and us, away.
Actually, the Model S can blow away almost anything. 'It's the performance that won us over,' admits editor-in-chief Jean Jennings. 'The crazy speed builds silently and then pulls back the edges of your face. It had all of us endangering our licenses.' Our Model S was of Signature Performance spec, which means its AC induction motor puts out 416 hp and that it blasts to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds. ... You'll note that we haven't even discussed Tesla's raison d'etre, which is, in Musk's words, 'To accelerate the advent of electric cars.' That's another credit to the Model S's overall execution and seductive powers. 'The electric motor does not define this car,' says Nelson. But it is, at the end of the day, what makes this very good sport sedan an absolute game changer. The Model S's range, rated by the EPA at 265 miles with the largest battery, finally fits the American conception of driving."
American concept of pricing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Model S's range, rated by the EPA at 265 miles with the largest battery, finally fits the American conception of driving.
But at $78,500 before a $7,500 tax rebate that doesn't fit the American concept of pricing.
Make no mistake, I'd really love one of these. But $78,500 is pricy.
Oh, and there is that all important question of how they hold up in a hurricane. Fisker's Karmas seem to have issues with getting wet. [jalopnik.com]
Re:American concept of pricing? (Score:0, Insightful)
The Model S's range, rated by the EPA at 265 miles with the largest battery, finally fits the American conception of driving.
But at $78,500 before a $7,500 tax rebate that doesn't fit the American concept of pricing.
Make no mistake, I'd really love one of these. But $78,500 is pricy.
Oh, and there is that all important question of how they hold up in a hurricane. Fisker's Karmas seem to have issues with getting wet. [jalopnik.com]
Excuse me, but you're talking about yuppie Americans here. All this talk about sticker shock and total cost would imply that Americans give a shit about any number past the $399 energy-clean-bill-subsidized lease payment.
They don't.
And chances are that's exactly how it'll get pushed to the masses. Toss in a few more choice words like "tax refund" and they'll turn into a best seller.
Re:American concept of pricing? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I don't think I would want to submerge any of these fully electric cars. I did put down 5k to be in line for one of these babies, but I will also leave money aside to have a rock-solid gasoline-powered car that will handle the situations that the Tesla shouldn't. No need to pull all eggs in one basket.
Excuse me, but I don't like I would want to submerge *any* car of any type. Especially when you're talking about storm surge (brackish water).
Re:Exactly. 78k is luxury territory (Score:5, Insightful)
Hybrid electric cars like the Prius C are $20k new, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, I realize.
The battery is a big factor in the Model S' cost. 85 kilowatts of lithium ion batteries ain't cheap.
Re:Just showing up is 90 per cent (Score:5, Insightful)
I was looking into Tesla's patents out of curiosity a few weeks ago and saw that they have a lot of patents regarding lithium-air batteries. It looks like they have looked long and hard at them and come up with ways to address their strengths and weaknesses, even though LABs are probably years away from production.
Re:Exactly. 78k is luxury territory (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe next time!
Not maybe, that's exactly the plan. Notice the trajectory here:
1) Tesla Roadster: Take a standard chassis, turn it into an electric car, sell as a high-performance roadster to people with ludicrous money lying around. The goal: to have a car prove the key technology: the battery and the engine.
2) Model S/X: Take the proven technology of the Roadster, put it into a sexy car that causes rich people to open their wallets, and sell it at a nice markup in the luxury segment. The goal: to work out the kinks in their manufacturing equipment and their supply chain.
3) Take their proven technology and manufacturing capability to create an electric for everybody.
In essence, Musk is doing a slow ramp-up that allows him to have customers subsidize the development of their final car. The 5k downpayment for a Model S is just as brilliant: it's free money for Tesla to build out their manufacturing capability. I love the Model S as a car, but it's the business model and the man at the top that makes think that Tesla is going to be the game changer for electric cars. The comparisons to Steve Jobs are not unwarranted.
Re:Exactly Re:Exactly. 78k is luxury territory (Score:2, Insightful)
If price of the electric car > Price of cheap gas fueled car + 200,000 miles of gasoline then don't buy
You missed the point of this. They weren't comparing this electric car to a Geo or something. They compared it to a Porsche and a BMW, and it kicked their A$$...
The real point is that a gasoline powered sports car has trouble competing with this electric car. So let me know when Porsche comes up with something that can compete with this on performance...
Re:Exactly Re:Exactly. 78k is luxury territory (Score:5, Insightful)
If price of the electric car > Price of cheap gas fueled car + 200,000 miles of gasoline then don't buy
If economics are how you judge a vehicle, spending anything more than a couple grand on a used car is a bad decision for you.
Re:"Model S" (Score:2, Insightful)
You must work for an oil company :-) The important thing here is energy diversity. With an
all electric drive train, you can be powered from Nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, gas/diesel/biodesel,
coal, alcohol, etc. You also have the long term ability to provide your own power (e.g. solar)
instead of relying large multinational companies to do it for you with many layers of companies
taking a piece of the pie (including stock market shenanigans).
The idea car for me would be a car with an all electric drive-train, batteries for short
trips, and a multifuel small generator in the car. I'm not holding my breath. It would
disrupt too many very rich companies.
Re:American concept of pricing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake me up when you're ready to compare apples to apples. There are plenty of luxury sedans and sports cars at that price range, and the Model S has more than enough features, style, and performance to match--or beat, as this award shows--every one of them. If you insist on comparing the Model S to a Toyota Camry, then I'm sorry but you're an idiot.
Musk has clearly articulated his strategy toward the electric vehicle market: Start at the high end, where the presently-high cost of batteries and the early-adopter tax can be easily absorbed. Make a car so sweet that it will fly off the lot at any price. Then once production is rolling, the technology is maturing, and costs are coming down, start removing trim features to bring the price down even further. But as long as the batteries and drive train remain expensive, it's better to sell a $60,000 luxury sedan than a $40,000 economy hatchback. Besides, he's essentially the only player in the luxury electric market. You don't expect 1-percenters to roll around in a lowly Nissan LEAF, do you?
But setting that aside, the Volt and the LEAF are not truly economy vehicles either. Both come with in-dash navigation, Bluetooth, and other advanced features as standard, and have great torque and handling, so can easily be compared to other cars in the $30-40k range. Electric cars are competitively priced if you are actually in their target market. Don't complain that you can't make your 150 mile commute on one charge, just don't buy one. The other 90% of Americans with commutes of less than 40 miles don't want you spoiling their fun.
Re:Exactly. 78k is luxury territory (Score:5, Insightful)
they make sense as commuter cars (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a single person driving tens of miles to work then tens of miles back, it totally makes sense to have a tiny electric car. Charge it at home, charge it at work, you're good to go.
Re:Just showing up is 90 per cent (Score:0, Insightful)
Electric vehicles have been around for 115 years. Tesla is just a hype machine sucking money from wealthy people. Take another company's car, slap in a load of laptop batteries, triple the price, and hope suckers come to your door.
If they were interested in energy efficient new vehicle design, they're scrap the battery, use the proven electric motor tech, and use a simple petrol engine to generate the power. My uni made one from a Ford Escort as a design project, nothing special. Only needed a 650cc engine to outperform and be more fuel efficient that the designers from Ford. It also massively reduced the complexity of the design by throwing away the standard drive train, hugely reducing servicing costs. Now if a bunch of spotty dweebs can do this, why can't the professionals in the industry? A: Money. It's not about making efficient transport, it's marketing and built-in failures to make yet more money.
Re:Exactly Re:Exactly. 78k is luxury territory (Score:5, Insightful)
If price of the electric car > Price of cheap gas fueled car + 200,000 miles of gasoline then don't buy
If economics are how you judge a vehicle, spending anything more than a couple grand on a used car is a bad decision for you.
If economics are your *only* consideration, maybe. Personally, I just bought a Nissan Leaf, and the evaluation was made primarily on economics -- but with the starting point that I was going to buy new, because I prefer to buy new and drive for many years. Given the available new car options, and my driving patterns and related requirements, and the available tax credits, the Leaf and the i-MiEV were the cheapest options. Many small gasoline-powered cars were much cheaper up front, but when you factor in 8 years of fuel, the electrics win hands down (for me).
If anyone is interested in my analysis, I did it in a Google Docs spreadsheet, which I'm happy to share: http://links.willden.org/electric [willden.org]
Note that if you dig into the calculations in the spreadsheet some of the cells contain insanely-complex formulas which are not obviously meaningful. My calculation was done by assuming a normal distribution of trip lengths, applying the obvious cost function to lengths and computing the expected value of the resulting random variable. That calculation is fairly hairy and the resulting formulas are expressed primarily in terms of the Gaussian error function. I used Mathematica to compute the expected value expressions and then converted them to spreadsheet formulas. The result works very nicely, but the functions appear to be insane. For example, the image I included on this Google+ post [google.com] shows the expression for the expected cost of operating a plug-in hybrid.