A few weeks ago I wrote on my personal blog about the Bugatti Veyron - I thought that was cool. Well, I found something that is even cooler (and a lot less expensive). Don't ge me wrong, the Veyron is a slick and beautiful car. What disgusts me that I didn't mention before is it's engine. It's the same old gasoline engine. Why keep building these dinosaur gasoline engines, which are so inefficient and need so much fuel to get the power you want them to give? Why not build an alternative energy (not fuel. energy.) engine that would be more efficient and give even better results? To me keeping the old ways is like building a super hot looking sports car with a turbo super charged steam engine. Sounds stupid right? That's how I feel about continuing to improve on gasoline engines. It's stupid. We can get less and less benefit from that type of engine for every research and improvement dollar spent. How many plastic operations can you do on a 100 year old person?
I will stop complaining, and tell you what I found so cool. It's the Tesla Motors new car. It's a two seater, sexy looking roadster. Powered entirely by electricity. Yes, I will repeat - it's a sports car!!! Here are the numbers: 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, almost constant torque from 0 to 13,000 RPM, 250 miles per charge, charges in 2 hours if the battery is dead, the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon or only 1c per mile. Now isn't that awesome?
Let's not forget that it is not only the fuel efficiency that matters. Since this is an electric engine all there are tons of parts of the classic gas engine that are missing. This frees quite some room in the car by leaving the gas tank out for example, but it also makes the car a lot more reliable as you there are a lot fewer parts to break. No transmission, no clutch, no cylinders, no pistons, no fuel injectors, no tank, no exhaust system, no intake system, no fuel pump, and the list goes on. Maintenance should be a child's play.
I have dreamed about this happening all my life. Pure electrical (or other non-burning energy source) with similar parameters. And it's a smart move - come out with a beautiful looking sports car rather than some quirky looking vehicle like we've seen so far. If people are shown that a sports car with these parameters can run (not just move) more than well on electricity, then they will be more convinced that a regular car with this technology should run even better and they will be less afraid to buy such a vehicle. I am sure that as soon as the Tesla Motors gains some more popularity, they will probably roll out a sedan.
I want to thank the people at Tesla Motors for making this vehicle come true. I do appreciate all your hard work and ability to bring this coolness to life, and I am looking forward for more.
To see the Tesla Motors car visit their web site at: http://www.teslamotors.com.
Photos of the car can be found here: http://www.teslamotors.com/styling/body.php. |