When I go to the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), I like to get downtown early, around 7 AM. That way I don’t have to wait in any lines for credentials and I can get my favorite free parking spot about a block from Cobo Hall. While waiting for the press conferences to begin today, I stopped at the Tesla booth to say hi to Rachel Konrad, head of communications. Tesla first appearance at NAIAS consists of a small booth next to the Lotus display. Tesla’s displayed a naked Roadster chassis, which laid the car’s Lotus roots bare. But Konrad was emphatic: only a small percentage of components are shared with the Elise. She said that 150 not-Elise Roadsters have been delivered. They’re completing 15 vehicles a week, with 1100 people on a waiting list. Their facility has an ultimate capacity of 40 cars a week. With production proceeding, albeit at a relatively slow pace, Tesla has grown their company beyond Tucker stage (50 units built). It remains to be seen if they surpass Bricklin (2854 SV1s) and DeLorean (~9000 DMC-12s). In the meantime, they’re building real cars. I know because I got to drive one…
In addition to the chassis, Tesla had a deep red Roadster on the stand. They were preparing to take it downstairs to Cobo’s Michigan Hall. With six automakers pulling out of the NAIAS this year, there was a lot of empty space in the basement. So the Michigan Economic Development Corp. sponsored what they called the EcoXperience. It’s a 700′ track laid out in a winding loop around a park like setting. Public show goers will get rides in the latest hybrids and alternative propulsion concepts. The track was also available for test drives during the media preview.
Apparently, the U.S. State Department had organized a meet and greet for international journalists with top Tesla executives (go figure). Tesla decided to give the journalists a spin in the Roadster. Konrad said I could tag along. I checked my schedule and decided that a drive in a $100k electric sports car was more important than the introduction of the Lincoln MKT crossover.
While waiting for everyone to show up, Mike Donoughe, Tesla VP of engineering and manufacturing, was running laps at a pretty good clip– considering it’s an indoor, one lane track. I’d estimate he was doing about 20 mph; faster than the suggested 10 mph limit. Later when I asked him, he said it was probably closer to 25. When the VIPs queued us up, I was second in line. I had jokingly suggested to Konrad that they put the Roadster on “valet” setting to keep the journalists from testing the 0-60 time, but the car was on standard settings.
Getting into the Tesla Roadster is not an easy task because of the wide stepover shared with the Elise.I was pleased to discover, though, that it’s much easier to access and exit a Tesla than the Lotus. That’s because it has sills that are 2″ lower than those of the Elise.
Brief instructions: foot on brake, release handbrake, shift from neutral to drive, foot off brake and on accelerator. Obviously, a low speed drive around an indoor course isn’t going to tell you much, but I had a blast. Between the torque and the Lotus derived handling, it was just a question of how fast I wanted to take the turns. Complete assurance that the car will go where you want it to go.
The Roadster is also remarkably quiet, with little noticeable whine or hum from the drivetrain. While the Tesla is surefooted, I was surprised that the steering felt a little heavy, a slight lack of feeling. The polished cement floor might have had something to do with that, or maybe it was the Roadster’s extra weight vis a vis the Elise.
Like I said, you can’t tell much from a “test drive” such as this. But the Roadster seems well screwed together and feels solid. The motor controls give a very normal pedal feel. This is a car not a golf cart.
Tesla used the NAIAS to announce the $128,500 Roadster Sport. The extra $28,500 gets you .2 seconds off the “normal” car’s 0 to 60 mph sprint, from 3.9 to the 3.7 seconds. It comes with a hand-wound stator and increased winding density for lower resistance and higher peak torque. In addition to Yokohama’s Ultra High Performance tires, the Roadster Sport has improved suspension with adjustable dampers and anti-roll bars, tuned to the driver’s preference.
Tesla came to the NAIAS to prove that they’re a serious player in the automotive world. Fair enough. This year’s NAIAS was “electric.” Almost all the manufacturers featured production or concept vehicles using electricity for propulsion.
Toyota introduced the third generation Prius and the Lexus HS250h Lexus derivative. GM devoted an entire press conference to battery news. Ford, fresh on their boost from the EPA rating the Fusion Hybrid at 41 mpg city, announced their own electric vehicle plans, including a battery electric commercial van, a battery electric small car to be jointly developed with Magna and their next generation hybrids.
Chrysler showed their version of an electric Lotus (the Chrysler Circuit), a Jeep Patriot range extended EV and the Chrysler 200C concept, also with a range extended EV powertrain. Even Tesla’s former consultant and litigant Henrik Fisker was at the NAIAS to show the production version of the Karma and a concept of its two seat retractable hardtop variant.
Who knows? Maybe next year the NAIAS will have quarter mile electric drag races down the main aisle in Cobo.
Now if we canjust figure out a way to get free electricity we got it made.
This is the second positive review I’ve seen of the Tesla roadster. The first is available via John Carmack of id Software (Doom) and Armadillo Aerospace fame.
He likes his example a great deal. Says it goes quick, and charges as quick and goes as far on a charge as Tesla claims. Quite impressive given the fact Tesla was on the Deathwatch PIP just a couple of months ago.
For the most part I like Tesla. They’re glorified electric RC cars minus the R part, but I think people know what they’re getting into when they buy them.
Tesla won’t solve global warming or create millions of green jobs, but its a great showcase of electric technology.
Electric cars are the future, period. There’s no other zero emission propulsion technology that is even close in terms of technological maturity.
Yea you can lease a Honda FCX, but how many hydrogen filling stations are there? Electric cars are available now, the infrastructure is already in place, people use electricity every day and are comfortable with it, and there are millions (billions?) of 110V sockets to recharge them with.
A Tesla is not the electric car that will change the world, but the Tesla might be the electric car that convinces people that electric cars can change the world.
I just read Carmacks Review thoughts on his Tesla. He speaks glowingly of it and offers some good perspective.
Interesting. Tesla seems to have settled down and, for a carmaker, to be in good shape. At least better shape than the Big Three. The Tesla death watch needs to settle in for the long haul.
The Roadster is a good car. I can’t figure out, though, why Tesla emphasizes that the Roadster is different from an Elise. Yes, it’s different. But not that different. Nor is the electric drive train that different from the AC Propulsion tzero.
Tesla broke no new ground with the Roadster, either in design or technology. But Elon Musk and Martin Eberhard did bring Silicon Valley style hubris and venture financing to carmaking. That counts for something.
Out of Tesla and Fisker, I really hope at least one (Hey, why not BOTH?!?!) of the companies make it.
An American car company without gobs of baggage like the Detroit trio would be nice.
GeeDashOff :
January 13th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Yea you can lease a Honda FCX, but how many hydrogen filling stations are there? Electric cars are available now, the infrastructure is already in place, people use electricity every day and are comfortable with it, and there are millions (billions?) of 110V sockets to recharge them with.
They won’t lease you an FCX Clarity unless you live near an existing hydrogen station, but last I heard they were working on a home system that pulls hydrogen out of natural gas.
At $600 a month, the FCX isn’t that bad…
Am I the only one who is concerned about how we are going to charge all of the electric cars? I feel we are all headed for a big surprise when we have rolling blackouts or extremely high energy prices due everyone plugging in their car at the same time. Our local power company has lobbied for years and just got a third nuclear reactor for its plant but it took years and people are still protesting it. I don’t know how we are going to switch from gas to electric if no one wants new power plants.
TEW:
There are many sources for renewable energy, all not too far from being a reality.
Solar and wind power are readily available and somewhat already in the conscience of the average citizen – especially solar can really power things up, if harnessed efficiently.
Then you get the water-based energy sources, like wave and tidal (the UK and Japan most notably already utilize this).
On top of all that, probably geothermal power has the most promise, since it is not all that hard to harness, and it is indeed plentiful (or so it seems).
At any rate, all of the above energy sources are much more efficient than burning fossil fuel – I need not mention also cleaner and practically infinite in supply.
Unfortunately there is less money in them, so…
The FCx clarity cost s $500,000 a pop , the Tesla a miserly
$100,000, plus Tesla will actually sell you the car .
Hydrogen is the only way the oil companies can see towards
maintaining their strangle hold over the roadfuel market !
@McDuck,
Wind/Water/Solar is all nice a feel goody but it actually accounts for very little. In fact, most power is generated using oil and coal – a not very environmentally clean fuel. Of course, there are newer, cleaner ways to use coal, but how much is actually in use? None. Nuclear is not the answer either. China has 28 new nuke plants either under construction or on the drawing boards and they’re without fuel. There is just not enough Uranium to fuel all the nuke plants we have, much less building more. TEW brings up a serious point. We will need huge advancements in power generation if we are expected to go EV.
TEW’s point is indeed well taken. Most folks have no idea of the sophisticated infrastructure that brings gasoline to all those pumps everyday; they are absolutely clueless about the intricacies and vagaries of the “power grid.” Americans have been pulling for electric cars for more than a century, but it still comes down to range, baby, range. And energy density. As has been said before many times — It’s the battery, stupid!
“There is just not enough Uranium to fuel all the nuke plants we have, much less building more.”
Sure about that?
http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2006/redbook/welcome.html
GDO,
“At $600 a month, the FCX isn’t that bad…”
If it was real. The Clarity is a $750,000 car. The lease money is only a token. They have leased or given them only to high visibility celebrities or “regular Joes” with a story that can capitalize on.
It’s scam. They just want keep selling you fuel.
The point of loosing money on a car with the promise of Hydrogen is in making consumers question Battery power. Meanwhile manufacturers and oil companies struggle to get hydrogen to a place where they can sell you the cars dependent on the fuel they will supply.
@ tesla deathwatcher :
“Interesting. Tesla seems to have settled down and, for a carmaker, to be in good shape. At least better shape than the Big Three. The Tesla death watch needs to settle in for the long haul.”
I just saw that Tesla had raised $40 million at the end of November, but as far as I can tell they’re still in pretty bad shape. Elon Musk admitted the Roadster costs more to build than they sell it for. They’ve delivered 150 cars and say they’ve got 1100 people on the waiting list or at least $110 million in expenses just to build those vehicles. Not to mention the costs of their employees, their delearships, their office and assembly plant, payments to Lotus, payments to VC’s looking for their ROI, etc. Call me cynic but it seems like they’re still facing a serious uphill battle.
20 mph around an indoor track? That’s not a test. Nothing to see here. Move along.
That’s why I included the phrase “Like I said, you can’t tell much from a “test drive” such as this”, putting “test drive” in quotes. – RJS
andrichrose:
That ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5thFx4hqFQ ) is a very good link. It’s one thing for Top Gear’s sloppy, pathetic attempts at being cute to mislead people about one car, it’s much worse for those to mislead people about an entire technology.
Plug-in hybrids are the future.
GeeDashOff +1
No, Tesla isn’t in the clear yet, financially. But as their production ramps up, the cost of the roadster will come down. And as they introduce new models, they’ll better be able to leverage their fixed overhead and have a shot at profitability. I’m rooting for them, and I look forward to recharging my Tesla Roadster (someday) with solar panels.
The difference between Tesla and the Big 3? Tesla is batting 100% (or 1.000 in baseball speak), as they sell one model and people want to buy it. The Big 3 offer over 100 models, of which only a handful are in demand, so they’re batting less than .100.
A batting average of .100 doesn’t keep you in the major leagues for very long, sorry to say.
I recently attended an engineering society meeting and listened to a presentation by a company that sites, permits, plans and installs wind turbines. A typical 3 reactor nuke campus would provide the power of 1000 of the current 2.5MW wind turbines. Their typical wind farm might be on the order of tens of turbines. For that, they have to build access roads, rebuild and reinforce existing town/county roads to withstand delivery of turbine components, create a power collection system that feeds into the grid, maintain the turbines and replace them at end of life. Even after wooing the local populace and getting through multiple layers of government bureaucracy, there is a hell of a lot of infrastructure development and overhead, which is why wind is still subsidized. Plus, in order to make wind a reliable on-demand power source, you need a lot of turbines widely dispersed – the wind will be blowing somewhere and you can wheel the power – but you have to de-rate the system based on statistical probability of windiness in all installed locales. TANSTAAFL.
I find it pretty phenomenal marketing that while Tesla can barely deliver its “base” $100,000 model, they are marketing the $128,500 Sport model, and the Brabus $180,000 version!
While the Brabus version has some incremental performance and looks upgrades, its more than funny that the “wow” factor is the programmed, Mercedes or F-1 motor sounds…
Maybe Gm should hire them to market their line of cars — at least until the Federal $$ kick in.
I don’t recall the source of the information, but I do remember reading recently about Tesla being in line for a Department of Energy loan this fiscal year. They basically are massaging and juggling their current pile of liabilities in anticipation of that loan keeping them afloat.
Factor in Uncle Obama’s impending arrival and his promise of eleventy billion green collar jobs in three weeks or whatever, and Tesla’s prospects for more sugar look even better.
Also, Tesla is a Silicon Valley darling amongst the Beautiful People like George Clooney, and as we know the Beautiful People want to help save the planet with their superhero, Al Gore. Tesla’s actual HQ is maybe a hundred clicks from Nancy Pelosi’s own district.
More I think about it, Tesla has their cards lined up more than any other alt.green outfit for access to the vast and impending pile of sugar that will be ushered in as the Robin to Obama’s Batman.
When the White House becomes Uncle Obama’s Cabin, Tesla should be able to clean up at Sugarloaf Mountain like no other Grapenuts start-up can. All the while they are getting subsidized they also are bringing their costs down. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a hard-ass (when you really get down to it) like Elon Musk showing people the back door while doing a press-con in the lobby to talk about some green-collar job action.
Its even more fitting because Elon Musk’s other money-pit – SpaceX – just got the $1.6 billion dollar contract to launch TV dinners at the ISS while NASA endures the down-time between the Shuttle getting put on ice and their (now delayed and over-budget) successor rocket program. Elon scored this contract on the sheer merit of blowing up three rockets to get one in orbit. Elon obviously knows how to get around a Senate committee or several, and has the lawyer-power to get at Uncle Sugar. Stars are lined up for Tesla this year, no doubt.
@CarnotCycle:
While I know most of the SpaceX bits of your post were more for colour than anything else, I will point out that none of the SpaceX rockets exploded – only one that failed to reach orbit had a real payoad, and that SpaceX, while playing with these things, is now the worlds second largest provider of rocket engines now, (second only to Russia) and the only company to have designed a new solid-fuel rocket engine since the Apollo program. They actually DO have a real and viable product.
If anything, it’s sad that the other US engine producers spend so much making so few engines that a little startup like SpaceX can step in and outstrip them in production in only six years.