Despite the fact that batteries were probably invented several thousand years ago, and have been used in cars since the late 19th century, they remain functionally primitive, messy devices. Compared to the absolutely amazing hydrocarbons that power today’s transportation, batteries are klunky, dirty, heavy, and slow to replenish, and, well, feel free to add any faults that I’ve missed, or make them up if you want. Mock the balky battery! It certainly deserves it.

It’s actually a shame though, because if only the battery would smarten up, and lighten up, and clean up, the green future of automobiles might loom nigh, peak oil could become another footnote in the history of technological advance, and four dollar gasoline could be a forgotten nightmare. Imagine your favorite clean electricity source replenishing the new magic batteries at your home, office, or Main Street charging station–quickly, quietly, and cleanly.

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Our pals over at Autobloggreen have a full gallery of photos of Tesla’s new Model S which seats seven (Volvo-like rear-facing child seats). True to form, the the new EV makes it debut with a wide range of unsubstantiated claims about range (300 miles), recharge time (four hours), features, everything. Oh, wait. Tesla will fit the $50K “entry level” Whitestar sedan—I mean Model S—with a 160-mile (including limp home mode) battery pack. Owners of the”Tesla for the rest of us” have to pay $? to upgrade for a 300-mile (including limp home mode) battery pack. And the timeline for this Roadster redux? The third quarter of 2011. Something tells me it’ll be later, and they’ll take your money sooner.

Shortly before Tesla officially debuted its Model S Sedan, three photos were leaked via (sigh) Twitter. This was one of them. Ouch. Tesla asked the leaker (Digg founder Kevin Rose) to remove the photos, prompting him to comment that he is “not sure if the company knows how the ’ol web works.” Anyway, the Model S (formerly WhiteStar) is supposedly being built on a chassis of Tesla’s own design (insert mirthless laugh here), will go up to 300 miles on a charge and hit 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. And all those “facts” sound reasonable compared to Tesla’s assertions that it will go on sale in 2011, ramp up to 20,000 units in the first year, and seat seven. Did the Jetson kids sit in the trunk too? Prices start at about $60K, depending on the battery choice, tax break and how gullible you are. Oh, and the looks? They got nothing on Fisker’s Karma.

Say you’re a small electric car maker in bankruptcy restructuring. You have no current production, you’ve only ever built a couple thousand street-legal cars and you’re operating on $6M in interim financing. With credit markets in turmoil and the car biz taking a beating, what’s a game changer to do? Luckily for you, the various governments of the United States seem to have acquired the reputation of being run by the kind of people PT Barnum would have loved. And as Autoweek reports, this opportunity has even the tiniest mice in global auto game warming up their vocal cords, hoping to pull off an American taxpayer-assisted roar.

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A post at the former Tesla PR chief’s personal blog recounts the debate inside Tesla over where to manufacturer the firm’s WhiteStar sedan. Siry describes grappling with the tradeoffs between a reasonable price and skeptical public perceptions of Chinese cars. “The part causing the most conflict,” writes Siry, “was that it was clear in the world of consumer electronics and chip manufacturing that low cost manufacturing had been achieved while also maintaining the highest standards in quality. Why couldn’t this be the same case for automobiles?” After all, he argues, your iPhone is designed in California but built in China—and nobody confuses it with a purely Chinese product. Pointing to the Volt’s projected $40K price point for a Cruze-based compact/mid, Siry argues that cost is too important to phasing EVs into the market to be ignored. And that firms like his former employer will pay the price for not taking advantage of China’s opportunities.

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One of the signs that a new technology has matured is when whole industries are worried about getting wiped off the earth as a result of that new technology. If that happens, change has finally arrived.

Industries are getting worried about electric vehicles. The machine-tool sector is very troubled, writes the Nikkei [sub], and it is worried for two reasons: “Plummeting demand from recession-hit clients is threatening the industry’s very existence, as the increasing focus on electric vehicles by ailing carmakers could eventually eliminate the need to machine parts for engines.” And why would that be?
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Channel Web says a quite simple adaptation of lithium-ion battery technology could make electric cars a hell of a lot more convenient. As reported in today’s issue of Nature Magazine, MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder have found that coating batteries with a thin layer of lithium phosphate allows small batteries to be loaded in twenty seconds, while car batteries could be good to go in just five minutes. That sure beats the six to eight hours plug-in vehicles currently need—provided you have access to an electricity outlet with a lot more than 110 or 220V. Anyway, MIT engineers have taken existing battery material and changed it to create what it calls a “beltway” that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy.

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Looks like we may have retired the Tesla Deathwatch a bit prematurely. Valleywag reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has launched a Nixonian “plumber” offensive aimed at eliminating leaks from the Silicon Valley startup. And boy are the employees happy about it. The plumb-and-purge strategy was launched when Tesla engineer Peng Zhou told Valleywag that the company’s cash reserves had dropped to $9M. According to the blog, Musk “hired an outside IT contractor go through the company’s email and instant messages, and then had an investigator take fingerprints off a printout discarded near a copier used to leak the email.” That investigation implicated Zhou who was asked to confess, apologize and leave the company. This was just the beginning.

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We at TTAC are aware of the strain we’ve been placing on attention spans today, what with the six (!) full-length pieces we’ve published today and all. In honor of your noble sacrifice at the altar of literacy we present a gallery of photos from our photographer in Geneva, Tim Sutton. Without comment. Enjoy.

Appearing in front of the Wall Street Journal’s typographically-challenged ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, California (where else), Ford CEO Alan Mulally predicted that electric vehicles will represent a “major portion” of FoMoCo’s lineup by 2019. OK, maybe 2021. I know what you’re thinking: big NSFWing deal. GM was predicting flying cars for its next model year less than a year ago. And Big Al will be sucking down Stoli martinis in Aruba by then. So what about, you know, now? How can The Blue Oval Boyz warm-up the AGW crowd (so to speak)? Automotive News provides the answer, such as it is. “Mulally said Ford was committed to shifting away from its recent reliance on light trucks for 60 percent or more of its sales so that more fuel-efficient passenger cars dominate. ‘We can now make cars in the United States and we can do it profitably.'” Question: does the United States include Mexico?

Think bankruptcy might be an option worth exploring for General Motors? Worried that the Volt might have been a tad too ambitious? Clearly you must be sick in the head. Reasonable people just don’t think that way. After all, why listen to bankruptcy lawyers and university researchers when you can get the truth straight from GM. You think those eggheads know more about GM than GM? Think about it. And while you’re suspending your disbelief, head down to GM’s Fastlane blog. You’ll get your facts straightened out faster than you can say “Stockholm Syndrome.”

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Gasgoo reports that China’s Jinan (Shandong) BaoYa are seeing US demand for its electric cars jump dramatically. BaoYa sold 500 of its electric sedans last year, and despite a weak export market, this year’s US-market orders have already topped 4,800. BaoYa sedans are Zap Xebra-like Low Speed Vehicles, with a top speed capability of 50 mph (limited to 25mph in the US) and a range of about 90 miles on a 5-8 hour charge.  We’re not entirely sure that the factory and production of BaoYa vehicles documented by Repubblica here is the same Jinan-based plant of Shandong BaoYa, but there’s little doubt that the nearly 5k BaoYas sold in the US were built in similar conditions. So Americans could gaze pityingly at their neighbors’ carbon emitting planet destroyers. Savor the irony.

Nissan is determined to sell electric cars in the US beginning in 2012, but the problem of building a charging infrastructure continues to bedevil product planners. Charging stations must be plentiful, convenient, and most importantly EV owners must be willing to wait there at least half an hour to complete a fast-charge of their EV’s batteries. Having added it all up and thrown in just a dash of condecension towards American culture (or lack thereof), Nissan’s boffins reckon that fast food joints are the perfect location for EV charging station, reports Automotive News [sub]. Of course the idea of sitting around a fast food joint for a half-hour while your car recharges for another 80 miles of driving kind of defeats the idea of fast food, but no matter.

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