By Nick Chambers •
September 17, 2008
Back in June, the Governator himself was lamenting about the prospect that Tesla Motors — one of the state’s own shining green corporate stars — might pass up California in favor of New Mexico as the location for its future facilities.
But, after some serious wheeling and dealing, Schwarzenegger convinced Tesla that California was the right place to build by promising beucoup tax incentives and major financial help. His package included a government-funded lease-to-own option that would save Tesla from purchasing $100 million of equipment up front, and waive $8 million in taxes to boot.
Above and beyond the state’s financial incentives, the deal with San Jose involves a 40-year lease in which Tesla has the first 10 years rent-free and all development fees rebated in the form of tax credits. Gotta hand it to Tesla, they certainly know how to work the system.
By Dana Nuccitelli •
September 13, 2008
Tesla Motors Inc. has selected BorgWarner Inc. for the production of a single-speed gearbox for the Tesla Roadster and is initiating a ramped-up production rate.
Tesla engineers developed the specifications for the new gearbox and provided them to BorgWarner. The new powertrain delivers about 30% higher motor torque on a single gear ratio, and it achieves a 10% higher EPA combined range.
The Roaster torque will be increased to 280 foot-pounds, while the EPA rated range of the car will increase to 244 miles, up from 221 miles. The quarter-mile time for the car is now in the 12.9 second range.
By Dana Nuccitelli •
September 11, 2008
An ‘air car’ sure sounds clean. A car that runs on air? What’s cleaner than that? But of course it’s not quite that simple.
The world’s first commercial air car is currently being produced by India’s largest automaker, Tata Motors, who is licensing the technology from European-based company MDI. A compressed-air car uses the force of super-compressed air to move the engine’s pistons up and down, as opposed to explosions produced from injecting a small amount of fuel. At higher speeds the engine will burn a small amount of fuel to create more compressed air, sort of like how a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt produces on-the-fly electricity. The hybrid air-car setup should be able use any number of fuels, including gasoline, propane, or ethanol.
So now that we’ve established how the Air Car will work, how green is it?
By Nick Chambers •
July 16, 2008
While the kinks are worked out, Tesla is starting to move Roadsters off the production line slowly.
27 Roadsters are currently in various stages of assembly, and the company hopes to reach a monthly production rate of 100 cars by this December.
In a blog post on the company website, Tesla CEO Ze’ev Drori has reprinted the content of a note he sent to customers last Friday in which he states that Tesla has finally “broken the logjam” and already delivered 9 Roadsters to California.
By Nick Chambers •
June 17, 2008
How would you like to drive an all-electric Mini? An EV Smart Car? A PT Cruiser? With the help of Hybrid Technologies, you can. They’ve taken many familiar vehicles, ripped out their engines, and replaced them with lithium batteries and electric motors.
On the surface it makes great sense and it seems there would be a huge demand for this sort of thing. Electric cars are nearly maintenance free. They don’t need oil changes and they have 90% fewer parts than gas cars. Plus, these EVs look like the normal cars that are already popular with many folks.
As reported by the New York Times yesterday, the two leading manufacturers of electric cars in the US are involved in a serious quarrel over alleged theft of vehicle design and trade secrets.
Tesla Motors, who recently began production of their electric Roadster, claims that Henrik Fisker took on an $875,000 design contract with Tesla in order to access confidential design information. After producing “inferior work,” Fisker launched his own company, Fisker Automotive, and released an $80,000 competing vehicle—the Fisker Karma—less than a year later.
