The Tesla Car

[PowerSwitchJames]

It accelerates more quickly than a Ferrari Spider and fast enough to leave a Mercedes SL550 standing, yet Tesla reckons it costs just one cent per mile in electricity to run and boasts twice the fuel efficiency of hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius. Tesla promises that the battery can be recharged in around three hours, gives a range of 250 miles and has a life of at least 100,000 miles, after which it can be recycled.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cars/story/0,,1855488,00.html

[SherryMayo]

The business plan behind the Tesla (according to an interview I saw somewhere on the web) was to use the profits of the high-end car to fund developing a sporty but more affordable one produced in higher volumes, and so on, ultimately aiming to get to an affordable family electric car.

I don't know how they go for battery materials though (eg any resource constraints? can they be recycled?)

[mikepepler]

More on their website here: http://www.teslamotors.com/

It is very neat, but I have two issues with it.
- it is still a car, using a large amount of material resources to build it and create roads for it to run on, all to carry one or two people around.
- some people will see this and think: "no need to worry about fossil fuel depletion or climate change then".

[clv101]

...it costs just one cent per mile in electricity to run and boasts twice the fuel efficiency of hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius.

Let?s think about that. 1 cent per mile. Let?s say electricity can be bought for 10 cent per kWh, although it could be as much as twice that these days. That means 50 miles will cost 50 cent and take 5 kWh of electricity. Numbers are all very approximate.

I say 50 miles since a half decent internal combustion engine powered car will do 50 miles on a gallon of fuel.

One gallon of fuel has something like 45 kWh of energy in it, assuming the ICE is 30% efficient 13.5 kWh of that actually gets usefully used.

Where am I going with this... I have absolutely no idea!

The generation and transmission of that 5 kWh of grid electricity will only have been some 35% efficient so it actually took over 14 kWh of fuel. The correct comparison to make would be 45kWh for 50 miles via internal combustion engine and 14 kWh for 50 miles via electric car. I guess that?s where their ?twice the fuel efficiency of hybrid cars? comes from. That sounds pretty good, especially when you consider the 14 kWh could have been generated from any of a dozen different sources and the battery could be charged off peak via a ?dynamic demand? scheme.

The fundamental difference however is not the power source, the efficiency of electricity generation involving a thermal stage is similar to an ICE. The difference is that the electric car only needs 5 kWh of useful energy where the ICE car needs 13.5 kWh to cover 50 miles.

The question should be why can?t we make 100mpg+ ICE cars with today?s technology, I think we can but aren?t.

[careful_eugene]

More on their website here: http://www.teslamotors.com/

It is very neat, but I have two issues with it.
- it is still a car, using a large amount of material resources to build it and create roads for it to run on, all to carry one or two people around.
- some people will see this and think: "no need to worry about fossil fuel depletion or climate change then".

I agree with all of the above, but this car looks the dogs bollocks and if I had enough money I'd buy one.

For anyone seriously wanting an electric car in the UK theres this http://www.goingreen.co.uk/store/content/gwiz/ (although it looks like a car for someone with special needs)

[clv101]

The other problem with the electric car in the UK is that our electricity supply faces more problems than our oil supply, this alone I would suggest rules out any significant (+3%) electric car deployment over the next 15 years. We need to be reducing our electricity demand by 30-50% by 2020 not look to substitute oil for electricity. There just isn't the available electricity capacity.

[kenneal - lagger]

These cars are a lot more staid but probably even more economical

http://server8.dedicateduk.com/~nicecar/home.html

http://www.goingreen.co.uk/store/

I've been trying to get my wife to by one instead of her Focus diesel, which won't run on biodiesel, but to no avail.