A&Q about Lotus
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Repost.
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Repost..
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Repost...
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Hey Steve, I think you accidentally re-posted that "repost" note.
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Threads merged
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Hey! Have you guys heard about the new electric Elise?
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Go to their web site. They are looking for the
best and brightest who know the Lotus platform
and have a passion for Green (yes, I mean that all
ways.)
Anyone?
Sometimes I wish I'd gotten that engineering degree like my dad wanted
instead of scoring cartoons....
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Originally Posted by hblotus
The 0-60 time is reported to be 4. Pretty impressive
Electric motors can out torque gas engines very easily. This is no surprise. The major question will be battery life and how long it takes to recharge AFTER you do 0-60 in 4 sec. Do you need a charging station every 1/4 mile?
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It's a damn shame they are so expensive - since first reading about this car the day after seeing an Inconvenient Truth I've decided to put 18 solar panels on the roof (Costco if you're interested) so powering up one of these babies would cost me nothing.
However it is simply too expensive to be practical, and with Mazda and Toyota both soon to release the gen.2 hybrids which will also be plug in to charge, long duration battery powered cars they have a very, very small window of opportunity to do well.
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Originally Posted by Aruna
........Tesla instead miter-cuts the rail, then bonds them together at the exact correct angle with a custom bracket..........
Aruna: This seems to imply that Tesla, not Lotus fabricates the chassis. I thought the Tesla was built at Hethel. Is this not the case? Does Tesla have it's own separate manufacturing facility? If so, what is actually done at the separate Tesla facility? and what, if anything is assembled at the Lotus plant? Just curious how that works. Very cool car BTW.
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Originally Posted by marcw
Aruna: This seems to imply that Tesla, not Lotus fabricates the chassis. I thought the Tesla was built at Hethel. Is this not the case? Does Tesla have it's own separate manufacturing facility? If so, what is actually done at the separate Tesla facility? and what, if anything is assembled at the Lotus plant? Just curious how that works. Very cool car BTW.
Lotus doesn't build the chassis for the Elise or any of its derivatives. It is built for them to their design specs by Hydro Aluminium. I suspect that is exactly how it will be done for the Tesla. And, yes, the Tesla will be built in Hethel.
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Originally Posted by macfly
It's a damn shame they are so expensive - since first reading about this car the day after seeing an Inconvenient Truth I've decided to put 18 solar panels on the roof (Costco if you're interested) so powering up one of these babies would cost me nothing.
However it is simply too expensive to be practical, and with Mazda and Toyota both soon to release the gen.2 hybrids which will also be plug in to charge, long duration battery powered cars they have a very, very small window of opportunity to do well.
I have 44 on my roof. PM me if you want advice or anything.
Make sure they give you the paperwork for the CEC rebate
AND the grid tie authorization!!
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Originally Posted by macfly
However it is simply too expensive to be practical, and with Mazda and Toyota both soon to release the gen.2 hybrids which will also be plug in to charge, long duration battery powered cars they have a very, very small window of opportunity to do well.
Too expensive to be practical? Compared to what? It's an exotic sports car! Toyota isn't the competition for this car. Ferrari and Porsche are the competition. You could get a Porsche Targa 4S for about the same sticker price -- but it can't match the Tesla's acceleration, and IMHO the Tesla would be way more fun to drive. Over its the life span the Tesla could easily save another $20,000+ on fuel and maintenance. Sounds like a bargain to me.
"Too expensive" is a funny argument to make on this message board of all places. Following that argument nobody would ever buy a Lotus Elise, since you can get two Miatas for the same price.
Now if you want to talk about more mainstream cars, like a four-door family car, Tesla are already working on new designs and moving in that direction. They wanted to do the sports car first, and I think it was a good decision.
As for Toyota and Mazda. . . I've heard Toyota announced they intend to make a plug-in hybrid, but I haven't heard any more details about that. There's also a rumor that GM might do a plug-in hybrid. I've never heard anything about Mazda making one. I'm confident there's room in the marketplace for both plug-in hybrids and pure battery-electric vehicles, so PHEVs aren't going to suddenly appear and blow Tesla out of the water. If we get a breakthrough in storage technology (like EEStor's thing) then it might be the opposite.
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I guess I should have added a full and complete explanation of how I use my sports car, and what I would buy the Tesla for, which isn't sports.
I use my Lotus to do track days. Buttonwillow is 120 miles north, I usually do around 220-250 on track miles and then drive home again. That is almost 500 miles in a day - if I go to WSIR I save 90 miles in total, making it a 400 mile day. The Tesla will not work as a sports car for me.
I want an electric car to use in town, so I don't have to do the most polluting thing of all, repeated starting, and then sit in stop/go traffic burning fossil fuels.
Yes, I care about air quality, global warming and I have a social conscience. However I love tracking, and have no concern that the little Liz only does 10mpg at the track because doing what I love I am burning way less fuel in a year that an average speedboat burns in a day, let alone a Lear jet on take off. However when I'm not at the track I don't want to burn and waste the go juice when and or if I could use another source of power.
Would I track a Tesla? Not really, I'd have to trailor it there and back, and then by later in the day when my lap times are getting good I'd be getting low on juice.
Now if Tesla can get something that is attractive and efficient as an in town runaround I will be thrilled to buy one, and that is the only reason I would have bought the one they have now, but at the cost of 4 Prius's it doesn't make sense. BTW I hated my Prius, it did an average of just 27mpg running around in town over the 7 months I had it, and it looked like a Pontiac Aztec - the ugliest car ever made. The one good thing I will say about it is that I sold it for exactly the same price I paid for it. What will the depreciation on the Tesla be like I wonder?
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Originally Posted by JnC
Telsa's expertise seems to be mainly with the electric engine and associated systems. I'd advocate sticking with what you're good at, and continuing to partner with Lotus.
The electric motor and associated system is developed and produced by AC Propulsion of San Dimas CA, IIRC.
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Originally Posted by pianomaniac
The electric motor and associated system is developed and produced by AC Propulsion of San Dimas CA, IIRC.
From what I understand, Tesla licensed some electric motor patents from AC Propulsion, but the motor is Tesla's own design. Most of their engineering work went into the battery pack -- a safety structure to house and isolate the cells, a liquid cooling system, a multitude of sensors for temperature, humidity, gases, tilt and the like, and a computer to control the whole thing.
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Originally Posted by macfly
I use my Lotus to do track days. Buttonwillow is 120 miles north, I usually do around 220-250 on track miles and then drive home again. That is almost 500 miles in a day - if I go to WSIR I save 90 miles in total, making it a 400 mile day. The Tesla will not work as a sports car for me.
Right. . . In addition to the battery limits, and the price tag, it also weighs about 500 pounds more than an Elise. The Tesla is not an ideal track car. The Wrightspeed X1 would appear to be more of a track car, except I think its battery range is even more limited.
If somebody figures out how to charge them faster, that would help a lot.
I want an electric car to use in town, so I don't have to do the most polluting thing of all, repeated starting, and then sit in stop/go traffic burning fossil fuels.
Not a problem I have, since I live in a small town with light traffic. But then, I also drive so little on a daily basis that I don't have much incentive to replace my 1995 Bonneville as a grocery-haulin car.
I'm interested in the Tesla strictly as a fun car. From everything I've read, it comes pretty close to my perfect idea of a fun-to-drive car.
Yes, I care about air quality, global warming and I have a social conscience.
I don't. Or I should say. . . Air quality is not an immediate, tangible concern for those of us who live in the boondocks, and I think global warming is mostly a scam. On the other hand, I do think US dependence on foreign oil is a real problem right now, and global oil depletion is likely to bring on a crisis long before global warming does.
The one good thing I will say about it is that I sold it for exactly the same price I paid for it. What will the depreciation on the Tesla be like I wonder?
My crystal ball is hazy, but I'll swing a wild guess and say it should hold its value very well. It's a low-production car, so it'll never be commonplace. If electric cars take off and become popular, the Tesla Roadster might come to be regarded as a groundbreaking classic. On the other hand, if electric cars don't take off. . . That will make it even more of a rarity, and there will always be a few EV collectors who seek them out, sort of like the Tropica.
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Originally Posted by hblotus
The 0-60 time is reported to be 4. Pretty impressive
The fact that you don't have to shift into the 2nd (and only other) gear until you hit 70MPH helps with that.
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Indeed, all good thoughts and topics of discussion.
I wouldn't want to bet against all the scientists who say that global warming is real, because it is their job to figure that stuff out, and they have no interest (ie: nothing to sell) in the results, except the facts. The one most compelling facts I've read to support the theory is the amount of our national forests lost to fire since 1965 - 1.5 million acres, 2005 - 4.5 million acres, 2006 - over 9 million acres and still counting!
Another handy fact you can check at any university website, or on Google, is that our world has a 110,000 year cycle, known as the Milankovitch Cycle, which for over 2.5 million years has defined/recorded the planet's temperatures. We are within that cycle, but we are about 5-10,000 early coming to the peak that usually foretells of extreme climate change. If you are interested it makes for compelling reading, but if you aren’t I’d also agree that we will not see the impact of these huge cyclical changes in our lifetime, and we certainly have far more pressing short term concerns to deal with! I'm sure that you’re right saying that oil depletion will make itself far more apparent before the sea levels rise to swallow Miami or anything that drastic, but everything in our world is always changing in bigger and smaller cycles, so one way or another change is inevitable.