Tesla Electric Sports Cars: "Late 2010"

[Pangloss]

These guys are apparently getting closer to production with a $40,000 variant that does 0-60 in a still-speedy 5-6 second range and seats 4-5 adults. It probably won't look like the picture, but may still be pretty sexy.

 

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/01/tesla_motors_california_governator_grab/

 

As the article suggests, that may not mean a lot to Europeans, but to Americans it means a great deal. Our typical home environment for a $40,000 car buyer (the most common car buyer) is a house in the 'burbs with a full-blown garage, so overnight recharge is really no problem, and a 165-mile range is quite acceptable for the daily commute. And we sure like sexy cars.

 

The plug-in hybrids may ultimately prove more serviceable, but I think a variety of approaches is good. I'd love to see some competition, though.

 

Oh, the proposed 2010 ship date is interesting to me for another reason. The movie 2010 had lots of electric cars in it. Perhaps it was more prophetic than we knew at the time.

[arnoldschwartz]

With the increasing prices for oil, i think this will become a vialbe storage, or if they can figure out a viable way for storing hydrogen then i think hydrogen cars will dominate the market.

[Phi for All]

With the increasing prices for oil, i think this will become a vialbe storage, or if they can figure out a viable way for storing hydrogen then i think hydrogen cars will dominate the market.

The Tesla vehicles are fully electric, and neither use nor store hydrogen.

 

As for your belief that hydrogen cars will dominate the market, is this because of current internal combustion technology? Where are the cars getting the hydrogen from? I sure didn't like the early cells that used petroleum.

[cellbioS]

It would be great to have an alternative. I do think the $40K price will have to go down for me to buy though. We had the hybrid option of our vehicle for that price and it was out of our range, esp now that hubby was laid off from work (happening to many now).