Tesla's Martin Eberhard cuts Detroit a little slack
We reported the other day on a Wall Street Journal article on Tesla Motors and their Roadster which mainly covers the same ground that we and countless other outlets have discussed for the past year. Here's a little more context about what was said in that interview.In the article company co-founder Martin Eberhard does acknowledge that building a real car and a viable business is no easy task. Martin has come away from this effort with a new-found respect for the issues that car-makers have to face in creating vehicles and bringing them to market. The task of meeting all the performance and safety requirements for modern cars has proved considerably more difficult than anticipated. This was especially true when combined with the job of integrating previously non-automotive technology like Tesla's lithium ion battery pack. They also had to deal with re-engineering required by the failure of components in testing. Then there is the problem of organizing the logistics of a world-wide network of suppliers for production. While Detroit automakers clearly made mistakes with their electric car programs in the 1990s, Martin acknowledges that they definitely know a lot more than most people give them credit for.
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jack 3:37PM (10/17/2007)
I thought Tesla's battery pack was NiMH?
Reply
Joseph 6:10PM (10/17/2007)
No, it's lithium-ion.
Reply
UH2L 4:28PM (10/17/2007)
This is exactly what I was talking about below in my comment about Tesla in this other AutoBlog Green post. Reality is hitting home.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/10/16/tesla-drive-reports-you-might-need-a-bib/#comments
Reply
rgseidl 4:48PM (10/17/2007)
@Jack -
no, the whole point of Tesla's battery pack IP is that it lets them use very large numbers of commodity Li-ion cells.
Reply
guy guy 10:46PM (10/17/2007)
It must be said that Tesla is building a COMPANY as well as a car.
When GM was building the EV1 they used an old building they had for design, brought in a handful of EV expert new hires and tapped the company resources for talent from top to bottom. They had two divisions building/arguing which would get the charger and inverter, and multiple plants that were fighting for the production line.
Reply
why not the LS2/LS7? 3:59AM (10/18/2007)
I kinda read this into his "pieces of junk" comment before. When he says Zap is doing a poor job, it's partially because he knows 20 months ago when they thought they were "this close", they found out all the extra stuff they had to do to make a finished, polished, safe, government-approve car. And having done it (well, almost all of it), he knows that any company that hasn't done it yet isn't nearly as far along as they think they are.
As Mr. Eberhard says, they're certainly not the first car company to do this. I remember looking at the T-Zero. You'd talk to these guys and they'd come close to saying "oh yeah, we're ready to go with this thing, it runs and everything, with the right funding, we can start cranking these out". But you look inside, and the car doesn't even have an interior! There's no way you'll get a car NHTSA approved with no interior! You'll never pass crash tests like that. There's all kinds of stupid regs too, like about door locks and things. The list just goes on and on. These guys know the engineering is sound, but they're still a long ways away on design for manufacturing and testing for safety and passing regulations.
I'm glad to see Tesla has gone through this (or most of it so far). Their car may have gained a few pounds or whatever, but it's going to be a better car for it.
Reply
Kent Beuchert 9:05AM (10/18/2007)
Detroit made no mistakes with it electric car programs of the 1990's - they built non-viable alternatives to gasoline cars because that was the best that NMH battery technology could do. You don't see any EV makers using NiMH batteries, now do you? When will the stupid EV dolts understand that without a good battery no body can built a viable EV , and with one, anybody can build a good EV? It's all in th ebattery, dummies, all in th ebatteries. Seven year old children don't have any problem understanding this obvious fact. Why don't you?
Reply
jk 8:52PM (10/18/2007)
@ Kent Beuchert-
The reason carmakers don't use nimh today is that the patents were all bought up by chevron (cobasys). This is why most don't even bother to try nimh. Toyota had to go through lots of trouble to get nimh into its hybrid and it still used gas (so chevron partially appeased). Think about trying to get nimh for all electric cars...not going to happen. I'm surprised you didn't know this.
Reply
Chris M 10:01PM (10/18/2007)
Cobasys holds the patents on NiMH batteries, and have licensed a few other companies like Panasonic and Sanyo to manufacture them.
Cobasys is providing battery packs for some hybrids, and mentions use in EVs on its website at:
http://www.cobasys.com/products/transportation.shtml
Try to buy an EV battery pack, though, and you'll run into some obstacles. They only want to deal with large manufacturers, and only for NEV class electrics.
Cobasys was bought out by Chevron, but it looks like Chevron may be planning to sell Cobasys as the patents are nearing expiration. Hmm, maybe if the sale goes through, the new owner might be looking for more customers...
Reply