Lotus Elise owner reports on his visit to Tesla HQ
Rahul Nair is a researcher at the Yahoo! Research Berkeley Lab and he drives one of my all time favorite cars, the Lotus Elise. I love the Elise because it's about as pure a sports car as you buy today. Besides being gorgeous, it is almost totally focused on it's mission. It's small and remarkably light weight, with the US spec version coming in at barely 1,900lbs. With so little mass it doesn't need a huge powerful engine to get mighty performance. All those attributes are big part of why Tesla chose the Elise as the basis for their first electric car. Rahul recently got the opportunity to visit Tesla's San Carlos, CA headquarters and learn more about the Roadster.
He took lots of photos and seemed to come away mighty impressed by everything about the Elise's battery-powered brother except the range and top speed. The top speed of the Tesla is only 130 mph compared to the 150 of the Elise. This one definitely seems like a quibble considering the limited opportunities for exploring those speeds on the roads of this country. The other main complaint is the "low range". I'll assume he forgot the quoted figure of 250 miles when he wrote this part, unless Tesla told him something they haven't mentioned to the rest of us yet about the true range of the car. For the record, the 10.6 gallon gas tank of an Elise will take it about 250 miles, depending on your driving habits. Thanks to Rahul for sharing with us and don't forget to check out his Flickr photoset of the visit.
[Source: Rahul Nair]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jon 12:23PM (2/21/2007)
Looking at his blog, I kind get a different feel for the guy. I think what he was trying to say was that If you are going to go on a trip, or track the Tesla you can't. Unless you have a way to recharge it. Since there are a lack of charging stations in the US, he was making a clearly valid point here.
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Tony Belding 1:20PM (2/21/2007)
I think when he wrote "low range" he really meant limited range, because you can't simply pull into a gas station and tank up. It's largely an infrastructure issue -- because there's something like 180,000 gas stations in this country. If there weren't, everything would look different.
I believe the portable charging unit should allow the Tesla to charge from a RV hookup. So, there are actually more potential charging points around than most people would realize. Incidentally, Tesla have made their charger specifications public; they are hoping other manufacturers will produce vehicles and chargers compatible with it.
Rahul wrote, ". . .honestly how many people very actually get their car past 130 on the public roads?" From my own experience I agree that's plenty fast. It's more of a marketing problem, since if you are calling it a supercar then people expect an impressive number, even if they'd never actually be crazy, drunk or stoned enough to drive that fast.
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Rahul Nair 10:36PM (2/25/2007)
As the author of the original blog I'd like to clarify that I felt the range was not enough for long trips and/or tracking the car. 250 miles is more that enough for the average sports car and you probably have a second car for long trips. As for track driving you may be able to get enough by trailering you car to the track and then hooking it up to the mobile charger in between sessions - we will have to wait until the it is actually track tested to see what track mileage it has.
All in all I think the Tesla may not be perfect for everyone but its a good compromise that should suit a large portion of its intended audience.
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