This is without a doubt the future of vehicles. Once the infrastructure is established, batteries becomes more efficient, and production methods become more economical a vast majority of the middle class will own one or more electric vehicles.
Okay time to do some critiquing of these posts.
On January 11 2013 08:04 BluePanther wrote: The range makes this impractical for anything other than a second care, which most people cannot afford (or aren't going to buy).
If you are going to buy this car, it is obviously not your first car. People who are not the slightest bit wealthy are not going to buy this car. This car is not aimed at the family making 40k a year... this is aimed at the households making over 80k+. As for the range being impractical this car is not for traveling 400+ miles a day this is for your around town errands, taking the kids to school, going to the movies etc. which is what most people do with their cars anyhow. Note that the average person drives 33 miles a day.
On January 11 2013 11:52 peekn wrote: This is without a doubt the future of vehicles. Once the infrastructure is established, batteries becomes more efficient, and production methods become more economical a vast majority of the middle class will own one or more electric vehicles.
On January 11 2013 08:04 BluePanther wrote: The range makes this impractical for anything other than a second care, which most people cannot afford (or aren't going to buy).
If you are going to buy this car, it is obviously not your first car. People who are not the slightest bit wealthy are not going to buy this car. This car is not aimed at the family making 40k a year... this is aimed at the households making over 80k+. As for the range being impractical this car is not for traveling 400+ miles a day this is for your around town errands, taking the kids to school, going to the movies etc. which is what most people do with their cars anyhow. Note that the average person drives 33 miles a day.
I think if you bump that up to 75miles a day you hit like 90% of US drivers. So i mean they aren't impracticable for a family with 2+ cars and a house, i again say house because how do you charge this thing if you park on the side of a street or in an apartment parking structure overnight. Infrastructure in large part limits potential buyers.
On January 11 2013 05:19 Ubiquitousdichotomy wrote: MSRB: 60,000$ + 7500 Tax Credit USD
I think you meant MSRP: $60,000 - $7,500 Tax Credit.
This car is pretty meh to me; it's nice that it's a practical, spacious middle-class electric car with competitive performance, but it's still a fatass at over 4700 lb, as is the Karma at over 5200.
I don't like audio and HVAC controls being touch-screen operated. It takes way too much attention.
Obviously this car will fail to win over driving enthusiasts like me but it does represent a nice next step for EV technology.
On January 11 2013 11:52 peekn wrote: This is without a doubt the future of vehicles. Once the infrastructure is established, batteries becomes more efficient, and production methods become more economical a vast majority of the middle class will own one or more electric vehicles.
Okay time to do some critiquing of these posts.
On January 11 2013 08:04 BluePanther wrote: The range makes this impractical for anything other than a second care, which most people cannot afford (or aren't going to buy).
If you are going to buy this car, it is obviously not your first car. People who are not the slightest bit wealthy are not going to buy this car. This car is not aimed at the family making 40k a year... this is aimed at the households making over 80k+. As for the range being impractical this car is not for traveling 400+ miles a day this is for your around town errands, taking the kids to school, going to the movies etc. which is what most people do with their cars anyhow. Note that the average person drives 33 miles a day.
I think if you bump that up to 75miles a day you hit like 90% of US drivers. So i mean they aren't impracticable for a family with 2+ cars and a house, i again say house because how do you charge this thing if you park on the side of a street or in an apartment parking structure overnight. Infrastructure in large part limits potential buyers.
I don't think that living in an apartment is going to limit the customer base. I don't think that they are marketing the car towards that demographic. I feel like this car is for the families with BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc and they want to have something new and exciting like a fully electric sedan.
On January 11 2013 11:52 peekn wrote: This is without a doubt the future of vehicles. Once the infrastructure is established, batteries becomes more efficient, and production methods become more economical a vast majority of the middle class will own one or more electric vehicles.
Okay time to do some critiquing of these posts.
On January 11 2013 08:04 BluePanther wrote: The range makes this impractical for anything other than a second care, which most people cannot afford (or aren't going to buy).
If you are going to buy this car, it is obviously not your first car. People who are not the slightest bit wealthy are not going to buy this car. This car is not aimed at the family making 40k a year... this is aimed at the households making over 80k+. As for the range being impractical this car is not for traveling 400+ miles a day this is for your around town errands, taking the kids to school, going to the movies etc. which is what most people do with their cars anyhow. Note that the average person drives 33 miles a day.
I think if you bump that up to 75miles a day you hit like 90% of US drivers. So i mean they aren't impracticable for a family with 2+ cars and a house, i again say house because how do you charge this thing if you park on the side of a street or in an apartment parking structure overnight. Infrastructure in large part limits potential buyers.
I don't think that living in an apartment is going to limit the customer base. I don't think that they are marketing the car towards that demographic. I feel like this car is for the families with BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc and they want to have something new and exciting like a fully electric sedan.
Well i was thinking city use those who live in cities and have the money to afford a luxury end car.
On January 11 2013 15:31 Rassy wrote:...How can one not become a conspiracy believer.. Sry but i cant get excited about this model s at all.
Seems a bit unlikely. After all, Tesla's first model had a sort of rough start. The revenue was very small due to how expensive the car was to create. But as technology progresses, the costs of these sorts of things decrease a huge amount. Just look at SSD hard drives. I bought one years ago for $150. It only had 60 GB, but now a 225 GB SSD can cost about the same price. Plus, it's SATA3 now.
More on-topic... I do like the Tesla cars. All of them are gorgeous compared to many cars nowadays. Hybrids always seem to look like total shit, as mentioned earlier. The only thing I don't like about electric cars is the fact that electricity mostly runs off of fossil fuels (coal). Coal =/= green either. Obviously, I have no idea how much of an impact on the environment. I imagine the generation of electricity from coal is still a fair bit greener than gasoline + cars, but who knows?
Also, I wonder how long the batteries last. Will the life of one of the car batteries be close to what it was after 5 years? Or are they somewhat replaceable?
I'm looking forward to the day we are rid of gasoline cars. Just think about how much nicer it would be to walk around in cities if your ears were never assaulted by engine noises, your nose by exhaust fumes, your eyes by stained buildings and walls. If I'm rich one day I'll buy a top electric car for sure. Love the quiet and the performance.
On January 11 2013 15:31 Rassy wrote: Lol electric cars, everything whats wrong with the world is shown in the history of the electric car. In 1920 there was a 100% electric car wich had a range of 80 miles. Yes i was extremely suprised when i found this out, in 90 years of technological advance we have not increased the range for electric cars at all, kinda funny isnt it?
The perfect electric car (or rather hybrid) can already be made.it has a fuel efficiency of 50 km/litre+ without anny drawbacks of limited range. The first version of the opel ampera (think the equivalent of the chevvy volt, though not 100% sure) was designed in this way but the final production version was a joke, since they abandonned the perfect system to fall back on the same hybrid crap toyota and honda also produce.
You have the petrol or diesel engine running at a fixed efficient rpm, and this engine drives a generator wich generates the electric current to power the electric motors and recharge the battery. This is extremely fuel efficient and 50km/litre is easily achieveable (the test version of the opel ampera with this system did 1/60) Most modern ocean going ships are designed in this way.
Now you can wonder why noone makes such a car, elon musk could make it easily, it would be a huge succes for everyone but the oil companys. How can one not become a conspiracy believer.. Sry but i cant get excited about this model s at all.
Various reasons, first off make a car with creature comforts and safety standards of a modern car then talk about how range hasn't improved. Along with things like top speed and smooth acceleration etc.
As far as the idea of series set ups they were explored like electric vehicles etc during the 90's and early 00's when the ideas of higher mpg were first hitting the scene what we ended up with is they were dropped due to cost to produce and profit returns. Toyta hit the market with it's hybrid set up with a complex parallel set up which is a mess to make the drive train and transmission but ended up working for them in the cost structure, it also benefited from that you don't need to change things. Take into account current automotive structure unless you own a house with a garage to park you car plug in cars aren't ideal for you. When you set it up in series you can really simply parts of the car like drive train but you have to add new things in there.
Electric cars went out of fashion because of ford, they made an everyman's car cheap and efficient, it's the reason why US cars are also gasoline driven instead of diesel what becomes established at the birth of a technology and gains a big enough foot hold pretty much sets how it will play out for a long long time. Electric cars at the time were for only the very rich they cost more then hell steam cars.
On January 11 2013 15:31 Rassy wrote: Now you can wonder why noone makes such a car, elon musk could make it easily, it would be a huge succes for everyone but the oil companys. How can one not become a conspiracy believer.. Sry but i cant get excited about this model s at all.
Because there must be more factors involved than what you listed, that is why it isn't feasible, or good enough to be the new stadnard.
It's not some sort of conspiracy that companies are introducing technology is a limited rate, the competitions are so huge they would've use the opportunity to create a hit, but if it isn't a hit, there must be more than you see.
Automatic getting your car towed because it parked is a poorly marked handicapped/babys/ev spot XD
On January 12 2013 05:41 Rassy wrote: Ok, but why is noone building a car with the system where the engine runs at fixed rpm to power a generator? Look up some info on this system, and the first concept version of the opel ampera (if info about that is still available on the web) i can not think of one reason to not make such a car. Would love to be prooved wrong btw, i am not into conspiracys at all but this situation i can not explain at all.
Annyway about the car.
It looks great wich is the most important feature of anny car.
Actually that's not all that new I think early 00's late 90's GM was testing that sorta design with the GM Precept and ford prodigy although most just remember GM's EV1 series they were messing around with, although most people just think of the pure electric model that was some what made in mass and actually tested handed out to people to test drive under a leasing agreement.
Anyways what happened probably didn't drum up enough buzz at car shows so the car wasn't made or when the started crunching the numbers for research and development into manufacturing such a car they ran into a wall. Considering that currently the Opel Ampera on the market today is just a chevy volt essentially. Concept cars are about the outer limits of what is possible to drum up buzz, when trying to bring them down to production models things often get left out or changed.
"Zero Emissions" is a very misleading thing to say about electric cars.
Charging an electric car isn't actually connecting the car to an electricity god praying service, it's taking power from power plants, many of which emit greenhouse gases, and giving it to its self.
$52500 is also a quite a lot of money to be paying for a car that doesn't even come with leather seats stock and can only go 160 miles @55mph on a single charge. I also don't really like the way the car looks too much. From a pure performance standpoint, this car doesn't look too great to say the least. It weighs 4,647lbs, which is getting into pickup truck territory, so it will handle like a boat. The base model also only goes from 0-60mph in 6.5 seconds, only gets up to 110mph, only does a quarter mile in 14.7 sec, and only has 235 hp, which is truly abysmal price/performance considering the base Corvette and Lotus Elise are around the same price and an Evo X is much cheaper, all of which are vastly superior cars performance wise to this one.
It only gets worse when you look at the "performance" package, which puts the price up to $87,500. Sure, it's a better car than the one that it costs $35,000 more than, but it is a really bad deal when compared to some other cars for around the same price like, oh I don't know, a fucking Corvette Z06, Jaguar XJ, Mercedes S Class, BMW M5 or literally fully loaded M3. I could probably go on for a very long time just naming cars that are better than this one for less money, it's just that bad.
On January 12 2013 08:42 Ettick wrote: "Zero Emissions" is a very misleading thing to say about electric cars.
Charging an electric car isn't actually connecting the car to an electricity god praying service, it's taking power from power plants, many of which emit greenhouse gases, and giving it to its self.
$52500 is also a quite a lot of money to be paying for a car that doesn't even come with leather seats stock and can only go 160 miles @55mph on a single charge. I also don't really like the way the car looks too much. From a pure performance standpoint, this car doesn't look too great to say the least. It weighs 4,647lbs, which is getting into pickup truck territory, so it will handle like a boat. The base model also only goes from 0-60mph in 6.5 seconds, only gets up to 110mph, only does a quarter mile in 14.7 sec, and only has 235 hp, which is truly abysmal price/performance considering the base Corvette and Lotus Elise are around the same price and an Evo X is much cheaper, all of which are vastly superior cars performance wise to this one.
It only gets worse when you look at the "performance" package, which puts the price up to $87,500. Sure, it's a better car than the one that it costs $35,000 more than, but it is a really bad deal when compared to some other cars for around the same price like, oh I don't know, a fucking Corvette Z06, Jaguar XJ, Mercedes S Class, BMW M5 or literally fully loaded M3. I could probably go on for a very long time just naming cars that are better than this one for less money, it's just that bad.
I'm hardly impressed.
reminds me of when i was shopping around my second car...looked at audi a4...35k, luxurious, looks good...190hp...WTF!??? pass.
only thing good about this car, imo, is the range of the top model, 200+ miles for mid range, making it a very practical ev. this is a first from what i understand. the car is indeed heavy, 1000lb more than e60 5 series but expected because of batteries. however because the battery layout, it has one of the lowest center of gravity of any car. i think the control system is interesting, though i'd prefer analog controls for much easier accessibility. the interior is subpar. but overall, i think its a good start and in good price range for a mid to high car choices that would compete with 5 series, e class, etc. i think tesla will do well if they continue on at the current pace
? Weird comparisons you're looking to compare upper end luxury sedans not exactly sports cars esp considering they sell sport models or at least sold them I think their new model comes out in 2014, acceleration is just a result of how electric motors differ from gas/diesel engines and how it results in changes to the power train. And either way you're missing the point of a EV.
Just thought it was cool to point out how powerful the thing is at lower speeds. I'm well aware that the M5 would be better on the autobahn, and faster once you get up to speed.
Slightly off-topic, but they are considering implementing rules stating that electric/hybrid cars have to make some kind of noise at low-speeds so people can hear them approaching. Probably not a bad idea, but if I ever buy an electric car and they end up putting into effect a rule like that, I'm making this my car sound.
EPT
