Initially was funded by the guy who created PayPal and sold it for an extraordinary amount of money to eBay. Now that it seems that the Tesla is here to stay when Chrysler decided to invest in the company as they have just bought 10% of its shares.

The Tesla will soon have two production cars ready for 2011. The sporty Roadster that has a pure carbon fibre body and can go 0-60 mph in just 3.9 seconds. The more practical Model S is also purely electric and has a range of 300 miles before needing to be recharged. And when you do need to recharge it, it can be quick-charged in just 45 minutes. But this isn’t your ordinary sedan as it too is sporty. It can go 0-60 mph in just 5.6 seconds.

If you are a serious environmentalist, make sure that if you get one of these cars, or any other EV for that matter, that you get you electricity from a renewable energy source. If you are one of the unfortunates who get their power from coal powered plants, you can always set up solar panels above your garage to charge up the EV.

If you are seriously thinking about getting the Tesla you might be surprised about the price. Despite what GM says about battery costs, the Model S has a starting price of just $49,900 with the Roadster starting at $101,500.

Image: TeslaMotors.com

Post from: EveryJoe

The New Tesla Electric Car

I had to laugh at this quote though…

 “Make no mistake – we are not a niche player with a car only for the rich and famous. As our agreement with the state so clearly demonstrates, we are building a high volume ZERO EMISSION VEHICLE, manufactured in California for mid-range family use. And we aren’t going to stop there. We will continue on and build even more affordable cars. You are witnessing the debut of a new car company, a company unlike all others, a company with a disruptive technology, a company dedicated for the exclusive production of Zero Emission Vehicles,” said Ze’ev Drori.

Can middle America really afford a $60,000.00 car?? Eh, I’m cheap. Maybe it’s just me.

At the very least, it’s nice to see Tesla continuing to develop autos that are bringing attention to the electric/zero emissions market, and spurring interest (and action) from larger companies. Well, except Ford. You know how they are.

Source: Gizmag.com

Post from: EveryJoe

Introducing the Tesla Model S

 the Tesla Roadster is the only zero emission electric vehicle in production today – this is in stark contrast to the others who only talk about their future plans.

It’s in production. This isn’t some wackadoo plan people are using to generate curiosity and then pull the old bait-and-switch when things don’t go according to plan.

I was hard on the company when they ditched then-President and founder, Martin Eberhard, but it seems the choice is working out in the end.

In my last posting on this blog I emphasized that my primary goal as the new CEO of Tesla Motors was to get the car on the road. The potential of this company is vast but it is dependent on meeting our commitments and that starts with delivering the 2008 Tesla Roadster to our customers.

And that’s exactly what’s happening. By early 2009, Tesla plans to make 100 Roadsters a month. With 900 preorders waiting to be filled, they can’t come soon enough.

Post from: EveryJoe

Woot! Tesla goes into production

Beginning in 2006, Federal regulation changed, preferring an air-bag system that could regulate deployment according to a passenger’s body size. Tesla has already lost so much money (a whopping $43 MILLION over 4 years) that company heads said they were ready to scrap the whole program rather than work the newer technology in. Personally, I think they’re full of it. They didn’t want anything else to push back their product release, especially with other luxury sport cars waxing environmental.

TAKE PART IN THE “NAMING THE CAR OF TOMORROW” CONTEST

Tesla has three years to work the new standards for advanced air-bag deployment technology into their design. Has the waiver bought them enough time to work it out? Possibly. Hopefully. As much guff as I give the company, they’ve created a link between environmentalism and the rich and famous that may wind up having untold benefits. We’ll see … apparently, by mid-March.

Sources:

San Jose Mercury News

Detroit Free Press

Post from: EveryJoe

Tesla Moves Deadline to Mid-March

Why? Green Wombat points to possible ego conflicts with the projects original financial backer, and father of PayPal (and various lesser-known companies), Elon Musk. He certainly is trying to make a hero of himself, saying that after choosing the wrong suppliers twice he finally had to step in to get the job done.

I think Martin Eberhard has done pretty well for Tesla so far. It’s tragic the company he started, which spawned so much renewed interest in electric autos, threw him to the side without much thought BUT he impacted the world once, and I can’t wait to see what the future has to hold for him … or because of his vision.

And yeh, I know that being replaced is par for the course for founders of MANY tech companies … still makes me sad about it. Especially since he has been so vocal about not wanting to go via the company’s website.

Good luck, Martin.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tesla founder gets pink slip :(

During an interview last week in his modest office in one of the nondescript warehouses Tesla occupies in the San Francisco suburb of San Carlos, [company co-founder Martin Eberhard] says he has gained respect for the challenges that conventional auto makers face.

Among the problems Tesla has encountered: The car’s body had to be redesigned because the door sills were so high that getting in and out of the vehicle required excessive acrobatics, especially for women in skirts.

A supplier for the car’s original transmission failed, and a subsequent decision to move from a one-speed transmission to a two-speed proved more difficult to execute than expected. In August, the car flunked a 30 mile per hour side-impact crash test, necessitating more last-minute design changes.

The logistics of getting components produced in Thailand, Taiwan, and the U.S. to arrive at the right time at the assembly plant in England have proven challenging. To manage this effort, Tesla in September hired Michael Marks, former chief executive officer of contract manufacturing giant Flextronics International Ltd. to become its CEO, replacing Mr. Eberhard, who remained as president of technology.

“Silicon Valley engineers find it easy to think they know everything and Rust Belt companies don’t know anything,” Mr. Eberhard says. “More often than not the knee jerk reaction, that these guys (in Detroit) don’t know what they are doing, is wrong.”

At a time when most people blame the lack of options today on the big auto manufacturers secret schemes at staying dependent upon foreign oil, Mr. Eberhard does blame carmakers … but for making bad decisions:

That said, Mr. Eberhard says conventional car makers did get it wrong on electric vehicle technology in the 1990s and early years of this decade.

Big car makers, led by General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., responded to a California mandate in the late ’90s by producing vehicles that were supposed to prove that electric vehicles could be affordable and oh-so-politically correct. Unfortunately, the GM EV1 and the electric Toyota RAV4 struck mainstream customers as geeky, slow and impractical.

“Electric cars had a terrible black eye,” Mr. Eberhard says. As far as the general public was concerned, “they sucked and they were dead.“

There are people who would argue vehemently with that last statement, but they would be few and far between. The general public needs cars that work well, not just cars that are good for the environment, and it looks like Tesla is bound and determined to take us all the way there.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tesla Roadster: You Can’t Kill an Electric Car You Can’t Catch