What worries me about Tesla Motors' Elon Musk talking about space
One of the worries I have about Tesla Motors and the tremendous hype surrounding the upcoming Tesla Roadster – a legitimately tremendous vehicle – is that the realities of the company's offerings won't be as cool or as dramatic as the visions we've all read about and salivated over for the last five months. In that time, I have heard criticism about the EV start-up that says the guys in charge aren't totally committed to anything beyond the Roadster, even though Elon Musk and Martin Eberhard and others have been repeatedly saying - to AutoblogGreen and other news sources - since the beginning that they are. This is a long-winded way to say I was a bit worried when I saw the headline to this story from Inside Bay Area: "Musk's next frontier: Space" (Musk is one of the main funders of Tesla Motors and helped design the Roadster but now spends a lot of time with Space X). I have not been a doubter that Tesla would really bring us the amazing $50,000 and $30,000 electric family cars in the next few years, but I did worry when I read that. Of course, I needn't have sweated even the slightest bit. I think the editor just wasn't paying much attention to the story beyond the first three paragraphs.
The article, by Matt Nauman, is really just a feature on Musk and Tesla Motors. There's not a lot that will be new to AutoblogGreen readers (although I had forgotten that the Roadster's code name was Dark Star and the family sedan is code named White Star), but I found it a good read (a lot better than this one, from the Pattaya Daily News, which was also written/updated in late December but has absolutely no new news). In the Inside Bay Area article, Musk confirms that the sales goal for the $30,000 electric sedan will be 100,000-plus units a year once it's released and disses Detroit's ability to build an electric car. "They [Detroit] know about eight-cylinder gasoline engines. They have no idea how to build a high-performance, AC-induction electric motor. Or how to build the very sophisticated drive electronics that are necessary to power that," he said.
The thing I take away from the Inside Bay Area article (and headline) is that I should just continue to trust that Tesla Motors will be delivering on their promises and realize that Musk is capable of bringing great electric cars to market while working on rockets. He's just that kind of guy, as he detailed in this blog post. Oh, and I need to let editors be editors.
[Source: Inside Bay Area]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ian 3:59PM (12/27/2006)
"but now spends a lot of time with space-x"
He was soing space stuff way before the tesla roadster and is one of the main "movers and shakers" in the private space buisness.
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Lithous 12:30PM (12/27/2006)
"They [Detroit] know about eight-cylinder gasoline engines. They have no idea how to build a high-performance, AC-induction electric motor. Or how to build the very sophisticated drive electronics that are necessary to power that,"
That's pretty funny. First, Tesla knows *nothing* about building a low performance electric motor. Why is that? They have some other company building "their" motor in Taiwan. They *may* (I'm not sure of this) know how to design one (again, maybe, they could have hired a consultant/contrator to do the design work on the motor) but production is not by them. Second, talking about not knowing how to do things, Lotus is giving them 90% of the car (design and build).
I stated before that they are dotcom'ers with small attention spans. They will sell out to some company, probably Toyota and most likely before the sedans are on the road in any real quantity and they will tell us how the future products were designed by them before Toyota took over (even though Toyota will spend time and money making changes to get them massively on the road).
Then their sedans are going to be steel (and not aluminum) and do so much while costing little (compared to their roadster). The only way that is going to happen is if they produce the bodies in China (unlike England where the roadster is made) and the batteries in China (maybe the roadster's batteries are from China or Japan but the sedan's batteries would have to be from China for sure to get the price down where they state their sedan will be) and maybe even make their motors in China too to keep cost down.
If Tesla fails with the electric car then it is mostly a bunch of venture capitalist that lose part of their billions. If GM and Ford fail it takes from their cash reserves or adds debt. Why didn't Microsoft come up with every single software program from scratch that they ended up buying out? Doesn't mean Microsoft couldn't have written it.
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Carl 11:16AM (5/28/2009)
That other company building Tesla's motors in Taiwan is Tesla Motors Taiwan Ltd. in San Chung City.
Please bone up before spouting off.
Carl
Peter 6:28PM (12/28/2006)
Tesla uses overseas manufacturing?! Gosh, that's like Toyota having a plant in the US or Ford building cars in Mexico.
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CM 2:49AM (12/28/2006)
Claiming that Tesla Motors "knows nothing about building low performance electric motors" is absurd. They not only designed the *high* performance 3 phase AC motor, they also developed the manufacturing process needed for the copper rotors. They don't want low performance - do you?
The founders of Tesla Motors are brilliant engineers, and have a record of completing successful projects - that is how they got their millions. Even if Elon Musk pulls out to concentrate on SpaceX, there are others to carry on the project.
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Peter 6:47PM (9/27/2007)
I am having problems with this as well. I live outside of Albuquerque, and pass the area where the Abq. plant is to be built each morning on my way to work. The problem is that the last time we (NM residents) had major companies look into build big plants out here; we got snuckered as those companies turned out to be using NM as leverage to win prime locations in other states.
This morning (09/27/2007) on a local radio station, a comment was made stating that the start up of Tesla Motors would be delayed for some time to "further research" in the end product.
Sorry folks… When I hear this or read the Wikipedia entry for Tesla Motors, HUGE red flags go up with me. The Wikipedia entry talks alot about the start up venture money et- all, but no substance. I am now starting to believe that Tesla may not be all what has been promised.
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