At a time when the executives from the Big Three are flying to Washington, DC to grovel for tens of billions of dollars to keep their floundering businesses afloat, a small auto manufacturer in Northern California is doing things a bit differently. Tesla Motors, the nation's leading all-electric car company, manufactures zero-emission luxury sedans in the heart of Silicon Valley.
The Model S is Tesla's zero-emission, 5-passenger luxury sedan powered by a lithium-ion battery pack. The Model S is expected to have a base price of $60,000 and achieve about 240 miles per charge with performance superior to other electric vehicles. The first sedans are scheduled to roll off the assembly line in San Jose, CA in late 2010. The $250 million facility where the Model S will be manfactured is expected to achieve gold certification from the U.S. Green Buidling Council Leadership in Energy and Environemtnal Design (LEED).
Tesla's first production vehicle is the Roadster, a zero-emission, all-electric, two-seater sports car. The vehicle is unique in that it provides exceptional peformance, zero emissions, and extraordinary efficiency. The Roadster has a 0-to-60 mph acceleration of 3.9 seconds and a 14,000 rpm redline. The vehicle is currently on sale in the United States and Europe. The company has delivered about 30 Roadsters to customers thus far and announced last week that it is ramping up production due to scorching demand. Approximately 1,200 people have put down deposits to reserve a Roadster, and the order book continues to grow despite softness in the auto sector.
Tesla has recruited a number of high-profile hires with deep auto industry expertise. Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja was formerly Controller at Ford, and Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen, the designer for the Model S, was the former Director of Design for Mazda North America. These new hires with auto industry pedigrees will give Tesla deep insight into the auto sector.
The first time you drive the Roadster, prepare to be astounded. There is no clutch pedal to meddle with. With just the touch of your foot, you'll be at highway speed within seconds. With a gasonline engine you are forced to make frequent gear changes to maintain opitmal levels of torque, but with the Roadster you get phenomenal acceleration and the utmost energy efficiency simultaneously. This makes the Roadster six times as efficient as the best sports car while producing a fraction of the pollution.
So you're probably wondering.... How does it work? Although conventional cars have over 100 moving parts, the Roadster has just one: the rotor. The Roadster's elegantly designed powertrain consists of just four main components: battery, motor, transmission, and power
electronics module. When Tesla set out to build a high-performance all-electric car, the most daunting challenge was obvious from the start: the battery. The Roadsters battery pack represents the largest innovation in the vehicle. Tesla has combined proven lithium ion battery technology with their own unique battery pack design. The battery is light, durable, and recycleable and capable of accelerating the Roadster from 0-to-60 in under four seconds.
You may find it surprising that the Roadster's acceleration power comes from a motor the size of a watermelon. While most car engines must be moved with a forklift, the Roadster motor weighs about 115 lbs. But more important than the motors size is its efficiency. The motor has effiencies of 85-95%. This way the precious stored energy in the battery goes to propelling you down the road instead of heating up the trunk.
The single speed transmission pairs the low drag and fuel efficiency of a manual transmission with the driving ease of an automatic. There is no clutch pedal. Just move the shift lever and the Power Electronics Module takes care of everything.
The Power Electronics Module, located in the trunk of the Roadster, is the hub of the electronic network that guides the vehicle. Each time you shift gears or accelerate the Roadster, the PEM translates your commands in precisely timed voltages. The PEM also controls motor torqe, charging, and braking.
According to Tesla Product Achitect and Chairman Elon Musk, "Tesla has amazing momentum right now. The excitement within the company is palpable. The company has clearly taken production of all-electric vehicles to the next level, and the Model S assembly plant will dramatically accelerate our growth."
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I want one of these! However, they are not very practical in our Wisconsin winters. Supposedly, Telsa also has plans for a more affordable electric sedan but I hear that this is on hold for the time being.
Okay, first. I want want too.
Second, a fair question: What is the real carbon footprint of this thing? They sell it as zero emissions, but making betteries and recharging them takes a lot of energy (too often petroleum-based) and impacts the environment. So while I'm psyched about the car from an engineering standpoint, I'm wondering whether it's more environmentally friendly than say a Porsche Cayman.
According to a Tesla whitepaper, their Roadster has a carbon footprint that is only about 1/3 of a Prius
Adam, I did some further research on this topic. This is how the people at Tesla would respond to your comment.
Most electric power generation in the United States does not use oil. Coal, hydro, nuclear, solar, and natural gas are typical sources for generating electricity. Power generation plants, even coal burning ones, are inherently more efficient and less polluting than vehicles due to economies of scale and the ability to more efficiently remove pollutants from a smaller number of much larger fixed locations.
Also, an electric car is far more efficient than a gasoline car, so the amount of pollution generated by producing the electricity to drive an EV a given distance is much less than the pollution from the gasoline to drive an internal combustion car the same distance. Whereas a combustion engine car – even those powered by hydrogen, ethanol, and biodiesel – can make use of around 20 percent of the energy that it consumes, a battery electric car like the Tesla Roadster is able to put more than 80 percent of the energy it consumes to use in moving the car down the road.
Great article, i do learn from it. Meanwhile, I am wondering what's the key reason for the huge trouble of big motors in michigan. is that because of innovation?