Via Andrew Tobias, a primer on electric cars from Tesla finanacial backer Elon Musk. Assuming Mr. Musk is credible, this is pretty interesting, including his polite take-down of hybrids.
Tesla is the all electric sports car that goes from 0 to 60 in 4.0 seconds and gets 135 miles per gallon EPA equivalent.
As Tobias notes, if Ford had been thinking this creatively they’d be hiring 20,000 workers instead of laying off that many.
NewMexiKen watched the video linked-to in the article. It’s a great looking car, range 250 miles on a charge, all the bells and whistles, etc., and NO SOUND. Hello guys, go listen to a Porsche and figure out how to reproduce THAT SOUND, and you’ve got something.
Which reminds me that I saw a tragic accident the other day near home. It didn’t appear anyone was injured, so it wasn’t a horrible accident, but it was tragic. A pickup had rear-ended a Porsche 911. Damage to pickup: None. Damage to Porsche: Lots and lots.
Elon Musk is definitely credible! Aside from being an investor in Tesla (and chairman), he also has a very wide-ranging interest in future-facing technologies and clean energy.
The low emissions and energy-efficiency of large-scale power plants, as compared with small-scale internal combustion engines, is not all that controversial an idea.
One issue Elon Musk did not mention in this artice is that there are some enviromental concerns with Li-Ion batteries that don’t apply to standard internal combustion vehicles. I have yet to see a really comprehensive study on the “net environmental effects” though, and there is not much agreement on what that truly means. I do know that personally I think it’s desirable to out-source the conversion of fuels into power to large-scale, efficient, lower-emission power plants than to burn your own gas 🙂
As for the sound, the Roadster does make a sound but it is nothing like a Porsche — more like the USS Enterprise.