Friday Funny – the guilt of Tesla

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what Tesla (the car) is really all about, but then this is a climate blog. I had the privilege of knowing some of the early employees and witnessed the early evolution of the car.
First, the Tesla roadster was never intended to be a mass production car – it was and is a technology demonstration. The real business will be production of the sedan model(s). Go over to Car and Driver and see what kind of reviews the production prototypes are getting. From the beginning the company has been backed by private investors, not the government. I don’t know if the feds have kicked in anything lately though.
As for the Tesla roadster itself, to say that it won’t go as far as an SUV is drastically missing the point, like saying you wouldn’t want an F-16 fighter because it won’t fly from London to Sydney like an Airbus. The roadster’s primary mission is to go out on Sunday morning and put the whoop-ass on geeks who paid equally ridiculous amounts for whale-tail Porsches. After which everyone adjourns to Starbucks to savor the adrenaline and preen about how much carbon was saved in the process – at least in Boulder. And make no doubt about it – the Tesla roadster is about as close to having a personal 4-wheel F-16 as any of us will ever get (some super-bikes are right up there too).
Of course the stupidity of Colorado and the feds giving huge rebates to such cars is beyond comprehension. The Tesla was designed for those who could afford it without having to ask the price. The fact that boldersolar gave his rebate to charity (hats off!) makes the point. So don’t throw the car-baby out with the eco-loony bathwater. It’s a great car for what it was intended for – to pave the way for creation of a major new car company. We’ll see how it comes out…

Rick says:
“I’ve noticed that, myself. When you begin to drive around a new area you can uaually guess the voting patterns by the vehicles you see on the road. Right of centre voting areas are filled with American branded automobiles “Progressive” voting areas, not so much. I find this ironic since American brands are mostly built with unionized labor. Has anyone ever done a study on vehicle registrations or is this just one of those anecdotal urban myths?”
On the Michael Medved some years back I heard him quoting a poll where in fact they determined that liberals were were apt to drive foreign while conservatives tended more towards domestic. When I’m in the liberal bastion of San Francisco at times it seems like I’m the only guy there with an American vehicle.
That’s one of the many reasons why I knew that the Chevy Volt would flop. There is one thing that eco-preeners won’t “stoop” to doing, and that is driving a Chevy.

_Jim says:
October 14, 2011 at 5:57 pm
“Mike Borgelt says on October 14, 2011 at 4:00 pm
…
Jim, Tesla was an engineer. He invented the all the parts of the 20th Century electrical power system – alternators, motors, transformers etc over a few days.
…
Mostly on groundwork laid by others; still not seeing a the wealth of evidence that would place him on a pedestal. You pen those words as if you are rendering ‘an enlightenment’, whereas in actuality it is a ‘repeat performance of a long-playing act’ … ”
I disagree. The Tesla coil and the polyphasic engine show a supreme systemic understanding; Tesla was able to imagine how alternating currents would enable these inventions, like nobody else. He was more an experimentator than a man of formulas, but his imagination needed no formulas – he knew how it would work so he skipped the paper part.
Interestingly, the underlying principle of the Tesla coil has an analogon in the mechanical world: the Linde condenser.
see fig.8 here:
http://www.teslatech.info/ttmagazine/v4n2/nichel.htm

Bouldersolar,
If they’re DOT tires, and they’re not drag radials then they’re street tires. Apparently the Tesla comes with a performance oriented Yokohama tire.
You seem like a real good sport. I’d be curious to hear your report after a trip to a “test & tune” at your local drag strip. The stop light Grand Pris is not a reliable basis to judge a car’s performance.

“Tesla claims that their Roadster will do a 12.7 sec quarter with a trap speed of 104mph. I don’t consider Tesla a very credible outfit, and the trap speed seems a little low for that ET with street tires. Anyway 12.7 is a very impressive ET, but it is not going to be beating the upper echelon of sports cars. It’ll be a tad slower than a stock c6 Vette from a couple years ago.”
Granted, but drag racing is only one measure of performance, With what is basically a reinforced Lotus Elise chassis, on the twisty roads, with gobs of low end torque, it is more fun than a barrel of monkeys – and faster than most production sports cars – in that dimension. And remember, this is nothing but a technology demonstration. The point of the exercise (apart from bringing potential investors back from test rides with wobbly knees and hearts pounding) was to demonstrate that they could build a technical and management team capable of manufacturing serious automobiles. And the performance envelope of the roadster is not a result of any sort of technical limitation, but the necessity to produce a car that could be sold to ordinary mortals, trading off performance for range and safety. In other words, software. I encountered one of the early pre-Tesla prototypes in 2005 (https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/mfJ7ock46px5Kkn_7meGrg?feat=directlink), and the owner (a Silicon Valley venture capitalist), told me that the main problem was that it could be provoked into wheel spin at ANY speed. It would indeed be interesting to see what would happen if you put fat tires on it and tweaked the software to allow a range of 1/4 mile. I suspect you would also have to install a liquid nitrogen cooling system to keep the motor and batteries from melting…
Seems to me, everyone in the US is kvetching about how the country has forgotten how to innovate and manufacture. That’s what Tesla is up to and some people can only wish them ill-will (not you Joe). It’s especially telling coming from the eco-greens, which reveals their true motivation to bring civilization to its knees.

I had an old Suburban for awhile. Keyed once in Boulder, tire slashed once near the university.

Looks like Tesla is just another Solydnra-style scam to get hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets Obama bundlers: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/green-tesla-motors-another-day-another-solyndra/?singlepage=true