Tesla Model S Sneak Peek

I understand your question and sympathise . the simplest explination is supply and demand . All over the the northern half of the world is summer . The demand on shipping goods , vaction travel , new construction and the amount of fuel (gas, diesel, air plane diesel, and plastics ) all go up ! There are only so many refined sources available at one time . Not to say that we're going to run out . But i'm still not seeing any stations closing because of a lack of gas or diesiel . You want to reduce the amount of demand ? Start with heavy equipment !

angelshorns------there is NO new petroleum being made----and there never has been. It takes millions of years to make fossil fuels---that's why it is called fossil fuel.

"Producing" fossil fuels means using up what there is available. The more you produce, the faster it disappears.

That is what "Peak Oil" means. It will get increasinly harder and more expensive to get to the oil, get it out, and refine it. You can already see that at work. Petroleum is now coming from strip mines in Canada----just 15 years ago it was considered too expensive and environmentally damaging to bother with tar sands.

you do know that these Tesla car's are purely electric...

I'm really no eco nut but.... boasting unsightly profits isn't a reason to complain?

What do you mean a scam?

Almost 10,000 (ten thousand) Tesla Roadsters have already been delivered and are on the road to date.

You see them all the time in southern California.

I just saw David Letterman on TV talking about how great his roadster is.

They are already producing and delivering a 2nd gen roadster with an upgraded motor and battery pack.

There are several dealerships in LA that have Tesla roadsters in the showrooms for sale.

How exactly is it a scam???

They took PREORDERS.
All buyers KNEW the wait time and were still willing to pay $100,000.00 for it.

Now the have their cars and love them.

Where did you get that crazy info from???

I see at least 1-2 a week on the roads here.

------"What do you mean a scam?

Almost 10,000 (ten thousand) Tesla Roadsters have already been delivered and are on the road to date."------

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--------"By the end of May 2009, the 500th Roadster had been delivered. [36]"----------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_Sport

500 is a loooooooooong way from 10,000.

$120,000 is a lot to pay for a car that can only go about 100 miles before you have to turn around and go home to recharge it for 3 1/2 hours. I guess I'd have to go for the economy version at $109,000.

It might not be too easy finding 70 amp/240 volt outlets to plug it into.

The Tesla is a very expensive toy. But then, there are a lot of internal combustion engine cars that fall into that catagory too.

You really have no clue what you're tlaking about i would bombard you with counter-arguments but it seems that the people before me took car eof that. Get a educated perspective on something before talking.... Tesla motors is the most highly efficient, highly practical, and respectful electric car manufacturer in the world at this point-- in my opinion.

Maybe do a little research on the father of the company, Nikola Tesla himself and you'll see this is just a fraction of his legacy left behind

Nikola Tesla was an anamoly of a man. Way beyond his time, extraordinarily intelligent, and deserving of far more attention. The Tesla vehicles, while expensive, are high caliber. I am still wondering why they haven't moved to more cartridge like batteries though. That way you can just stop at a cartridge station and replace the one you have. That would completely negate the recharge argument.

* Tesla is committed to using the same battery strategy as in the Roadster -- using large, liquid-cooled packs assembled out of off-the-shelf lithium-ion batteries, the so-called 18650-sized batteries. The packs will be somehow sandwiched in the floor of the vehicle. The quick-replacement design is problematic, said Straubel and Kurt Kelty, the company's director of energy storage systems, and is the subject of a lot of "deep thinking." Regardless, Tesla has no plans to invest in battery-swap infrastructure as part of the Model S' business plan.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-neil29-2009apr29,0,7903226.column

a battery swap will be possible in less than five minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_WhiteStar#cite_note-3

---------"I am still wondering why they haven't moved to more cartridge like batteries though. That way you can just stop at a cartridge station and replace the one you have. That would completely negate the recharge argument."-----------

Do you want to spend over $100,000 on a car with no warranty? Not many people would. How would you know that the replacement battery that the service station swapped in was the right battery? Do you want to pay for the damage to a brand new car that got the engine fried because some dufus put the wrong battery in----or get stranded by the side of the road somewhere because the car burned up due to an electrical problem from putting in the wrong, an old or improperly charged battery pack? What if you get home and find out that the battery you swapped out for your brand new $8,000 or $10,000 battery is old or abused and won't hold a charge? The service station isn't going to help you---the battery that you gave them is long gone in some else's vehicle. What if you have to have extensive repair work done to your car and the factory says that they won't cover the repairs because you didn't use the right battery? What service station is going to go to all the expense to cover such contingencies when they do not have to with liquid fuels?

How much money and time would it take for Tesla company to establish, equip, and hire and train technicians for 200,000 battery swap and recharge stations---and then you'd have to swap batteries every 100 miles or so.

Do Tesla's have air conditioning? Do they have power steering or brakes? Power windows or locks? Radios or CD players? On star or GPS?

If you decide to take a trip and drive to Las Vegas or Death Valley in the summer, you might want air conditioning---that uses up power. If you drive in Minneapolis or Chicago in the winter, you mght want a heater.

Well, I'm assuming that the car you have would have some way of indicating a specific type of battery for it, and I would guess they would maybe possibly put a label on their batteries to avoid those kinds of problems. Who knows though right?

As for training people on how to swap those batteries, maybe we could just color code them all so it won't be that difficult to distinguish one battery for another. Installation of the batteries (a cartridge-style battery) would probably require removing the battery and then putting another one in the hole left by the previous one. Difficult task I'm sure, but I think there might be people out there looking for jobs that might be willing (and able) to do that kind of work.

Finally, I'm fairly certain the Tesla vehicles have all the perks. You also realize, they can produce energy through harnessing the resistive heat produced when breaking and using photovoltaic windows. These processes could further increase the amount of electricity available to the vehicle while driving, and provide for the extras like A/C, heat, and maybe even a radio.

Edit: ras, thanks for the info. I hope they change their minds. It just seems like an easy solution that is actually already being developed in Isreal and Denmark to be ready next year. ('Swap' Stations for Electric Vehicles? http://www.cnbc.com/id/30744602).