Just in case you’ve never seen the BBC television series Top Gear, I’ll summarize it for you: Jeremy Clarkson, the primary host and stand up comic, hates anything that’s battery powered, hybrid powered or diesel powered. He also hates anything from America and most things from Germany, yet he rarely finds fault with anything made in the United Kingdom. His love for Range Rover borders on the absurd, especially when he routinely slams American cars as being prone to electrical component failure. Mr. Pot, I do believe you’re calling Mr. Kettle black. It should come as no surprise, then, that Jeremy Clarkson panned the Tesla Roadster during a segment taped in 2009. After all, the car is built in America (based on a Lotus Elise platform) and powered by batteries, not gas.

Tesla has been after the BBC for months, trying to get them to pull the Top Gear episode from syndication without response. The California based automaker claims that Top Gear’s findings are both fraudulent and malicious, and yesterday filed suit against Top Gear and the BBC. Tesla contends that the events depicted in the show (such as a roadster running out of charge on the track, after just 55 miles) aren’t supported by the car’s on-board data loggers. In other words, Tesla claims that the review was scripted to meet an agenda, and was not conducted in an unbiased and impartial manner. Since customers continue to question Tesla about the Top Gear segment, it’s obvious that it’s had an impact on Tesla’s business and earnings.

Tesla isn’t seeking punitive or compensatory damages from the BBC, but simply wants the offending episode taken out of syndication. They’re also requesting that Top Gear broadcast a follow up and correction to set the record straight, but I can’t see that happening unless a court says, “make it so”.

Source: Motor Authority

The Tesla Roadster. Image: Thomas Doerfer

How much fun can you have for $25.00 per hour? I suppose that depends on your selectiveness and moral standards, but $25 per hour is about the going price for concert tickets, range fees plus ammo or a halfway decent dinner out (excluding drinks). If new car sharing and rent-as-you need company Getaround has their way, $25 per hour may rent you a Tesla Roadster, but only in the San Francisco market. As Gas 2.0 points out, the list price for a Tesla Roadster is slightly north of $100,000, which puts the cost of a monthly least at nearly $1,700. That’s mortgage payment money, so the best chance that most of us will get to drive the electric sportscar is via a Getaround rental, assuming that they expand the service beyond the San Francisco market.

Tesla’s Roadster is really the first electric car built with sporting intentions. It offers both quick acceleration (0-60 comes up in 3.9 seconds or less) and remarkably good range (244 miles) if not flogged mercilessly or driven flat-out. Since the Tesla Roadster is based on the Lotus Elise platform, handling is as good as it currently gets for electric vehicles, but the car is penalized by a curb weight of over 2,700 pounds. It won’t run with a standard Elise in the corners, but chances are it will leave one for dead on the straights (at least until the 125 mph top speed is reached).

Source: Gas 2.0

Tesla’s savior has risen! The highly marketable Model S can be seen in this video, driving under its own power through an immaculate countryside unspoiled by fossil fuel.Tesla keeps asking for—and getting—money to develop its hypercool Model S sedan, but it remains an elusive beast. The company showed off the car’s aluminum skeleton at the Detroit Auto Show this year, but a complete car was conspicuously absent. Now we know why. It was having a nice drive in the country.

Model S Alpha Hits the Road from Tesla Motors on Vimeo.

According to Tesla, the Model S will be available sometime in 2012. It’ll seat up to seven, hit 60 miles per hour in 5.6 seconds and will have a range of 300 miles/charge. It’ll also have a crazy-big 17-inch touchscreen built into the dash to control various amenities like the stereo and HVAC system. Price? To be determined. Tesla say they’re the most efficient automaker on the planet and will be able to build and sell the Model S for a reasonable sum. It’s also taking over the old GM-Toyota NUMMI plant in California, even hiring old GM line workers.

When it does hit the market, the Model S will be competing with the Chevy Volt hybrid, which, you know, Runs Deep and all. Personally I think the Chevy looks like a styrofoam packing block when compared to the Tesla.

Tesla's Model S Sedan. Photo: Mark Warren

It costs a lot of money to design and implement new propulsion systems. If you count the EV-1, General Motors has been working (intermittently) on electric car technology since 1990, which is a lot of R&D hours burned. When government subsidies for electric vehicles go away, Nissan will need to sell some 500,000 Leafs each year to recover the development cost and turn a profit. Much of the expense associated with both the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf comes for their batteries: both Chevy and Nissan use custom built lithium-ion battery packs, which undergo an extensive amount of testing to ensure cell optimization prior to assembly.

Tesla, on the other hand, projects that the Model S sedan will turn a profit with a sales volume of just 20,000 units annually. This is partially due to the fact that the Model S borrows heavily from propulsion technology developed for the yet-to-be-profitable Tesla Roadster. It’s also due to the fact that Tesla uses off-the shelf lithium ion batteries in building their battery packs, instead of devoting resource to building custom battery packs. Similar lithium ion cells are used in laptop batteries, and these smaller cells cost about seventy-five percent less than the cells used by GM and Nissan.

Maybe the sheer volume of smaller cells used by Tesla negates problems caused by a few being out of spec, and perhaps the battery assembly in the Tesla Model S will be more serviceable than the battery pack in the Chevy Volt. Still, it’s hard for me to imagine that much of a cost saving without some kind of performance penalty. I guess we’ll know for sure when the Tesla Model S finally does hit production.

Source: Left Lane News

I’m not much for conspiracy theories, and I don’t buy into the hype that GM killed the EV-1 as part of some vast OPEC-fueled scheme to keep us addicted to gasoline. When it comes to electric cars, here’s the cold, hard fact: gasoline won out as the propulsion method of choice in the opening years of the 20th century. Fossil-fueled vehicles have had 100 years worth of ongoing development, and have gotten incredibly safe, fuel efficient and practical. Electric cars, until recently, have been advanced only by pseudo-mad backyard visionaries, with large automakers avoiding them like the drunken blond with the open herpes sore on her lip. For the vast majority of buyers, they’re simply not going to represent the best choice in the near future.

I’m a car guy, and when electric cars attain the same level of performance, affordability and practicality as their gasoline counterparts, I’ll gladly drink the electric car Kool-Aid. Hell, electric motorcycles are almost there, as evidenced by the Brammo Empulse, and the Chevy Volt is a solid launch pad for future enthusiast vehicles. Sadly, electric cars just don’t do it for me today, and I don’t see a time in the near future when I’ll be writing a check for an electric-only car. That said, “Revenge of the Electric Car” looks like an interesting bit of cinema, even if I won’t necessarily agree with the filmmaker’s perspective. Stay tuned for my review.

Not long ago I was asked as to whether or not I would actually pony up the cash and purchase an electric car. My knee jerk reaction was HELL NO! Then after thinking about it for awhile I started to rethink the question in terms of; what would an electric car have to become in order for me to purchase it? So much of what I love about the automobile is visceral. The looks, feel, sounds and smells are all part of what make an automobile attractive to me. For me to like a car you can better believe that it needs to have one hell of a presence to it. Today’s cookie cutter jelly bean rides are crap, and although they do serve a purpose, they have no place in my garage. Seriously, my version of hell would be having to drive a Toyota Camry everyday for the rest of my life… dear God that would suck.

Right now there are very few electric car offerings on the market. We’ve got the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt, Tesla Roadster, as well as the upcoming Fisker Karma. The Leaf and Volt are for the masses, with the Tesla and Fisker serving the higher end markets. Keep in mind that the end goal here is still the same as it was when the automobile was created over 100 years ago, meaning that it still has to get us from point A to point B. The real question though, aside from overcoming range anxiety, is will these cars be fun.

Cars for me act as many different things. They’re my therapist, my vacation, my money pits and my punching bags. They provide me with an outlet whether I’m tinkering or driving and they can do this because from a technology standpoint, they’re still simple machines. Electric cars though… well ladies and gents, that’s a whole different ball game. Say goodbye to the dirty, loud and obnoxious internal combustion engine and get ready to be greeted by the sound of silence.

Don’t get me wrong, there are those out there who are going to embrace the electric car with both arms. I’m curious though as to how many artificial sound effects manufacturers are going to have to build in over time to win over the enthusiast crowd. I can see it now… my exhaust note will come from the radio, my smokey burnout will be attributed to a smoke canister in the rear bumper and my feeling of g-forces will come courtesy of an electric seats with twitchy electronic bolsters. Like I said, the future has some very interesting things in store for the automobile.

It’s no secret that Toyota’s influx of cash into Tesla probably saved the struggling electric automaker. In return, Tesla gets to build bland but marketable electric RAV-4s, while continuing with the development of their Model S sedan. Now battery maker and electronics giant Panasonic has stepped up to the table, offering Tesla $30 million in investment dollars. What does Panasonic get out of the deal, aside from shares of Tesla stock? In exchange, Tesla promises to use Panasonic batteries in their battery packs, and will give Panasonic preferential treatment over other battery suppliers.

I see it as a win-win for both companies. Panasonic gets the benefit of association with perhaps the world’s leading authority on EV manufacturing. Tesla gets the benefit of Panasonic’s extensive R&D into battery development and production. Together, their stated goal is to reduce the cost of EV batteries, ultimately driving down the cost of electric vehicles to be on parity with their internal combustion counterparts.

I’m not ready to dump cash into Tesla stock just yet, but I see this as a positive sign. If they can convince me that the Model S will eventually come to market (or even if they’re making progress on its development), I’d feel better about their long term viability as an automaker. The worst thing that could happen is for Tesla to be absorbed by Toyota. The world already has enough boring electric cars, but we need some to be passionate about. If Tesla can’t build them, nobody can.

I’m still not sure the United States is ready for a full fleet of electric cars from our various manufacturers. They have limited range, no recharging infrastructure and so far, cost way to much to be considered economical. Combine that with a sub-200 mile range and one can see the many drawbacks that we are presented with. That hasn’t stopped Tesla though, the maker of the $101,000 all electric roadster. You see they’ve just opened their first overseas dealership in Toyko, Japan, the land where most of our electronic gadgets come from.

For Tesla the move was obviously very strategic, especially with the recent influx of more than $50 million in stock purchased by Toyota. Aside from stock, Toyota has also signed a $60 million contract with Tesla for aid in the development of a fully electric Toyota Rav4 crossover vehicle. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, “We think the Japanese market is a fantastic market,” – I supposed he better say that considering what his company has been paid to deliver. Tesla also brings in a stylistic breath of fresh air for Toyota, a company whose cars are generally quite bland. I doubt highly that we’ll be seeing loads of Tesla’s zipping around Tokyo, but hey stranger things have happened right…

Source: Freep.com

Do you a Tesla Roadster electric car? If so, heads up: Tesla is recalling 439 of the battery powered sports cars, to reinforce a wire that could chafe against a panel, creating the risk of a short or an electrical fire. Tesla points out that the wire is part of the auxiliary wiring harness and not part of the Tesla’s propulsion system or primary wiring; in other words, we’re talking twelve volts and reasonable amperage, not high voltage and dangerous current.

The recall affects only models 2.0 and 2.5, and there has been only a single instance of chafing noted by a customer. To address the potential problem, Tesla will shield the wire to prevent rubbing against the edge of a carbon fiber body panel. Recall notifications (via email and snail mail) have already been sent to owners of affected cars, and Tesla will offer on site repair courtesy of their Service Rangers program. It’s also important to note that this is a voluntary recall initiated by Tesla, not a recall prompted by an NHTSA investigation. Props to Tesla for above average customer service on this one.

Now here is an interesting comparison. Motor Trend has decided to take the best electric car on the market, the Tesla Roadster and pit it against one of the best handling Porsche sports cars in existence, the new Porsche Boxster Speedster. The Tesla, as most people know is based around the body and chassis of the Lotus Elise, which as we all know is one the premier sports cars on the planet earth. With that in mind one would think that the Tesla would be a world class handler. With all those heavy batteries tucked under the Tesla’s skin though you’d have to figure that something in the performance department would have to give. Click play to see what the guys at Motor Trend thought. I have a feeling you’ll find this very interesting.

Source: MotorTrend.com