The car fits seven people and their luggage: five adults and two children in rear-facing seats under the hatch inside, with luggage in the boot up front.
So 7 people if you’re willing to put your kids in the trunk.
That base price is for the 160-mile range pack; a 230-mile range pack and a 300-mile range pack will also be available.
Wonder how much $$$ for the 300 mile range car, and what that 300 mile range equals in real life. I’m guessing almost doubling the range doesn’t come cheap, and even with the 300 mile pack you’ll be lucky to get 150 real world miles unless you drive like a grandmother.
Good to see a company advancing the technology, but mainstream electric only is still a long way off. I’m much more impressed with the plug in hybrid concept like the Volt.
Cant wait to see an independent company do a cost of ownership comparison that accounts for, cost of vehicle/maintenance/electricity bills/etc, compared to a similar gas powered vehicle.
Not trying to sound negative about it, im just interested to see.
The maintenance would be my worry. I’m not sure how many of their components are derived or borrowed from parts on other manufacturers’ cars, but, while Top Gear liked it, they had a bad reliability experience just driving TWO cars for ONE day.
They had a much better experience with the Hydrogen fuel-cell powered car that they tested, though I can’t remember the make or the episode.
They absolutely do it for me, based on the torque, but I don’t like the weight. Maybe someone will find a way to integrate batteries into the body-work so that you can free up even more space, and reduce overall weight. Get me a sub 3k pound electric car with decent performance that will do 250 miles on a charge, charge in 4 hours or so off a home outlet, or 10 minutes at a high-output service station, and cost me $30-35k, and I’ll buy it in a second.
Tesla roadster is only 2700 and has a good range. Price and charging time are the issue.
Also, these range on electric cars are all dependent on how you drive it. You would likely have to drive like a 90 year old lady to get full advertised range.
Not that much different from any other car. I average 27 mpg in my MINI because I drive like a twat - I can get over 36 if I drive conservatively.
Like you said, price and charging time are the issue. And reliability. Give me the whole package and I’ll buy it. Hell, I’ll even take a 100 or 150 mile range, if it can top off at regular service stations with a quick charge of 5-10 minutes.
right, but when you run out of gas, you just refill. When you run out in a Tesla, you are dead in the water, you need to get to a power source and wait 16 hours for a charge.
Also, like I said earlier, the Tesla Roadster died in 57 miles on Top Gear. That is a HUGE difference than going from 36 -> 27 mpg in a car.
Cheap charging at home, runs all electric until the battery is dead, then fires up it’s on board gas engine to keep driving as far as you want, filling up at the thousands and thousands of existing gas stations.
I’ve said it in every Tesla thread… 100% electric cars are nothing but toys for rich people. Until they solve the issue of real world range of 300 miles, and being able to recharge in the same time it takes to refill a gas car, they’re not practical every day vehicles.
Yes, and I’d imagine that AAA will have portable battery packs to top you off and get you to a gas station, just like they’ll run you 3 gallons of gas now.
And Top Gear quoted that number, but Tesla quotes 4 hours for a full charge on 220 in this article, with a quick charger. Did you read it? You seem awfully stuck on this 16 hour thing that doesn’t appear relevant to the article, and is completely IRRELEVANT to what I’m talking about.
And we don’t know the circumstances of that, but it IS similar to driving something like a LS1 - where you can get close to 30 mpg cruising on the highway, but if you’re flogging it at a track event or autocross (similar to the kind of things they would have been doing on the test track), you’re looking at closer to 12.
Look, I’m not arguing that I’d buy a Roadster. I don’t understand why you’re taking my reasonable hypothetical for some point in the near future and setting it up against the Roadster, and acting as if that somehow invalidates it. They’re completely unrelated.
If you had one, you would understand the limitations. It isn’t an every day vehicle, that isn’t the purpose at this point.
Besides, with 220 it charges in FOUR HOURS, with 440 it will probably be half.
If you are commuting with it or doing daily driving, you plug it in at night every few days and there isn’t even a hint of an issue. It wouldn’t be super pratical for long road trips, but… duh.
I know you’re not going to read this, but the Tesla Sedan that this thread is about? Yeah, it has a range close to an average gas sedan, and can fill up in less than 10 minutes at a high output outlet, like something they could install at a gas station.
It’s in the article. Everyone keeps on skipping over this and talking about a 16 hour charge time.
Has the whole world gone crazy!? Are we reading the same article, here?
And Top Gear quoted that number, but Tesla quotes 4 hours for a full charge on 220 in this article, with a quick charger. Did you read it? You seem awfully stuck on this 16 hour thing that doesn’t appear relevant to the article, and is completely IRRELEVANT to what I’m talking about.
4 hours is pretty fast :tup: to that
And we don’t know the circumstances of that, but it IS similar to driving something like a LS1 - where you can get close to 30 mpg cruising on the highway, but if you’re flogging it at a track event or autocross (similar to the kind of things they would have been doing on the test track), you’re looking at closer to 12.
The circumstance is that Tesla handed them a car. I assume it got an overnight charge. Then they beat the piss out of it on the track and the battery ran out of juice.
Look, I’m not arguing that I’d buy a Roadster. I don’t understand why you’re taking my reasonable hypothetical for some point in the near future and setting it up against the Roadster, and acting as if that somehow invalidates it. They’re completely unrelated.
I am simply stating the restrictions of the car in its current form. I didn’t realize there was an issue with doing that.
If there’s a demand for the service, it will spring up. You know, shopping mall security guys have little battery packs that they carry around to jump start cars that have dead batteries? Something like that.
It won’t be the end of the world if you run out of juice. You won’t have to push it home. Maybe if you’re one of the initial adopters, but in a couple of years, as electric cars gain momentum, the infrastructure and business environment will rapidly expand to fill needed services.
The points you’re posing are not insurmountable problems, but mere inconveniences in the market as it stands today.
It’s not bad for an overnight charge, or to throw on after you get home from work, but before you go out for the night. Plenty of time.
And the matter of minutes that the higher charge service-station based plug could offer? Makes it sound almost as good as a gas powered car, to me. Once all this infrastructure is here, I’ll be interested, that’s all I’m saying.
Yeah, the existing roadster has limited mileage in its current form. I’m not arguing that.
I didn’t realize there was an issue with looking at a near future technology that I will be able to afford, instead of a current technology that I cannot.
This is a poor estimate as the charging regimen of a li-ion cell is not voltage-terminating. Typically, they are charged at an 0.8C rate until they reach peak Voltage/cell (~4V), and then terminated once charge current reaches less than 15% of the original current.
edit: one thing that may be limiting is the charge current/cell, so increasing charge current may put them at that limit. I’m not sure if they are able to charge at a 0.8C rate with a 220V line.
I’ve been using li-ion and li-ion-polymer batteries for years now in RC stuff and you can’t simply double the voltage and charge them in half the time. The faster you charge them, the shorter their life span.
And the idea that you could charge it more than once in 15 minutes is just laughable. It would cook the pack.
But reality and what electric car people promise are two things very far apart.
The ability to charge it should be dependent on the wiring. If they’re charging a bunch of laptop battery packs, it could be done in sequence or in parallel, with the parallel allowing for faster charging, as far as I understand.
But heck, I’m in law, not electrical engineering, so I could absolutely be wrong. I’m just saying that, from my perspective, it doesn’t look impossible.
I like it. Top gear was right about batteries being a weak spot.
It always has been, but people would still buy them. How much was an old EV1
manufacture. I’ll bet it is much more than the Tesla?
I’ll keep waiting for the Hydrogen economy to come on line…
Fuel cells could be a great savior so long as H2 is readily available and idiot proof.
