AutoblogGreen Podcast #1
It's finally here! The very first AutoblogGreen Podcast! Sebastian and Sam talk about some of the green highlights from this week's Geneva Motor Show, including the new diesels from Cadillac, Mazda, and Subaru, and the Subaru R1e electric car. The new Honda Small Hybrid Sports Concept could be a fun, green successor to the old CRX and the Insight and the Toyota Hybrid-X gives a hint of the styling of the next generation Prius. We've also got an extended interview with Tesla Motors CEO Martin Eberhard. The transcript of the interview can be found here and here. We hope you'll subscribe to the podcast so you can get them automatically when they come out and we're going to try an put one out about every two weeks. We'll also make sure the sound quality is better next time.SUBSCRIBE to the AutoblogGreen Podcast in iTunes
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rgseidl 10:51AM (3/12/2007)
Great podcast, thank you. The interview with Martin Eberhard revealed few new details but they seem to be thinking big enough to have a chance of actually becoming a viable car company.
What surprised me a little is their ambition to sell their products directly without intermediate dealers even for White Star, much as Dell as done for PCs. Tesla's motivation may be a little different, but scaling this sales model up as production volumes grow will be difficult. Cars are not PCs, people want to test-drive what they intend to buy. Japanese car salesmen face the same problem, but for a very different reason: they cannot afford the real estate for their own showrooms. Instead, manufacturers have set up centralized showrooms where you cannot actually buy a vehicle.
Mr. Eberhard did underline quality after-sales service but with less to fail it's unclear just how much value can be added that way. The pre-sales model beyond the enthusiastic early adopters still seems a little fuzzy to me.
Another issue that was left out was how Tesla tests calendar life degradation of its Li-ion batteries. You can accelerate stress testing over 50,000 miles but that may not yield authoritative longevity data.
I'm hoping that you will give Phoenix Motorcars and Zap!, both of which you discussed in ths podcast, a chance to respond in the near future.
Among the conventional car makers, it would be very interesting to hear GM discuss Saturn's Green Line technology (is it coming to Europe via Opel?) and BMW articulate the Efficient Dynamics package in the BMW 1 series (is that coming to the US, possibly in different vehicles?). These two manufacturers address very different market segments, but in marked contrast to their Japanese rivals, both appear to have concluded that idle-stop and energy management in the engine periphery are the low hanging fruit for high volume hybridization.
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John Rowell 11:42PM (3/12/2007)
Congratulations on your first podcast ~ this is an important milestone! I enjoyed listening to the entire interview, and I would like to second everything the previous poster said. Technically the audio quality could have been better (ie. higher bitrate and less noise) but for speech alone this is ok. Looking forward to more interviews in the future, and it would be nice to hear Phoenix Motorcars' side of the story on batteries as well.
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