This is pretty cool!
 

I picked up the latest issues of Motor Trend and Road&Track and found articles about this cool new brushless/li-ion powered roadster:

http://www.teslamotors.com/

The battey pack consists of 6831 li-ion cells that are cooled by the refrigerent lines of the HVAC system. I wonder if it uses A123 cells or something similar?

That is a pretty cool car and I want one. the good thing is they are just going to get better, WOOT.

Pretty cool, and 0-60MPH in 4 seconds is FAST, but 220 miles per charge could be a problem for any sort of long trip, since you can't recharge anywhere as easily as you can with a gas station.

electric vehicles are the future. It starts at the racetrack, look at a123's killacycle. As batteries become lighter and electric motors more powerful they will dominate at the track and then trickle down into mass production for consumers. The future is bright, except for the move towards flourescent lightbulbs, things could be brighter there!

It's also fairly heavy at 2690 lbs for the size of the car. For 100 grand there are so many better options out there, I see this as more of a novelty car, if anything.

I agree that it's a novelty now, but so were brushless/lipo 1/8th vehicles several years ago. It's only going to become more mainstream as time goes on.

Also, 1000 pounds of the Tesla is for batteries. As technology advances and power density increases for batteries, the weight will go down.

I almost got on the waiting list for one of those last night, but it means selling my street rod

im going to wait for the cheaper feiago 8xl motor option:lol:

i was just having a discussion about the tesla roadster with another coworker who's also a car buff - what would we buy in the 100g price range, if we were in the market. there are some good options: audi r8, ford gt (ok, that's a bit over 100), and i would take the tesla roadster hands-down. not only would it beat anything off the line in the same price range, i'd also never EVER have to stop at a gas station, and i'd never EVER need an oil change. as for refilling/charging convenience, it has a portable charging cord as an option where you can charge off household current... i think there might be even more of those at any given place in the country than even a gas station. :lol:

tesla is saying they're developing a less expensive sports sedan. less expensive could very well be 80k instead of 100 though. :mdr:

Two words for me:
Nissan GT-R :yipi:
Quite a bit faster than the Tesla off the line, too :P

oh yeah.. forgot about that 4wd guy. :smile: i guess 0-60 in 3.3 secs is a wee bit faster than 4 secs.

still need to use a gas station though...frequently. :na:

You may as well build an electric car. I'm sure you could do it for less then 100k. I have a friend who is building one and I think it is going to cost him about 20k.

If I had that sort of money, I don't think gas would be such a huge issue! :oh:

Building an electric car would be quite the venture, that's for sure.
I say we just put seats on our BL rcs and ride them around, much more cost effective!
:lol:

The Tesla roadster does not use A123 cells as their energy density is lower than the ones they use. If i'm not mistaken they use 18650 size batteries. Tesla has some good blogs on their website. This one explains why they do not use A123 batteries. You could easely spend hours reading them (all). Very interesting stuff.