Introducing the Tesla Model S

Did they take a fuse out, or just gun it? It's got a lot of torque. It's kind of weird seeing a burnout and not hearing engine noise.
 
Electric cars have no turbo lag. Even with VGT, the most powerful diesels take time and revs to build boost.
 
I saw one of these up on highway 18 when coming down from Crestline. At first I thought it was a Maserati, then a Jaguar.. but finally, when it had passed us, I saw the badge in the rear and went "Oh".. This car has severe identity crisis.
 
The Motor Trend one comes off as just as much of a publicity stunt as the Prius win 9 years ago was, but the Automobile award was a much better article. Glad the thing is getting the recognition it deserves.
 
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I saw one of these up on highway 18 when coming down from Crestline. At first I thought it was a Maserati, then a Jaguar.. but finally, when it had passed us, I saw the badge in the rear and went "Oh".. This car has severe identity crisis.

Identity crisis or not, the subtext behind your post is that you saw it and thought "expensive car". Rather than "ugh, an electric car".

I'd suggest that means the design has worked.

Oh, and as promised, a Tesla-related Christmas treat.
 
Identity crisis or not, the subtext behind your post is that you saw it and thought "expensive car". Rather than "ugh, an electric car".

I'd suggest that means the design has worked.

Indeed. It's sort of embarrassing though that I needed to see the badge before I realized what it was. The utter silence as it passed should had been the first clue.. :embarrassed: But then again, these aren't common cars.
 
A good place to start would be the documentary "Revenge of the Electric Car", it should still be on Netflix.

Also, swing by Tesla Motors Wikipedia page sometime for some fun facts, like them suing Top Gear, which was dismissed btw, with the judge saying Tesla's claims are "so 'gravely deficient' it could not be allowed to proceed.

Or the debacle with Tesla trying to sue Fisker Automotive.


Also, how about Tesla constantly running out of money? Changing the prices of cars that people have already purchased, or asking the government--the U.S. Department of Energy for over $400 million dollars.

What the F is Tesla doing with Taxpayer money? If he wants to build a business he should be able to do it on his own, not beg for money from the government.

Something fishy about that guy. Also, his cars are constantly being recalled. I don't even know how people can talk about Tesla and not think it's a huge joke.
 
The $400 million loan was part of a department of energy program for advance vehicle technologies. Tesla has done very well raising money and musk has put a lot if his own money into the company as well.

Also Tesla has only issued two recalls. One of which was caused by lotus.
 
Also, swing by Tesla Motors Wikipedia page sometime for some fun facts, like them suing Top Gear, which was dismissed btw, with the judge saying Tesla's claims are "so 'gravely deficient' it could not be allowed to proceed.

Tesla's lawsuit on Top Gear was quite justified, since Top Gear lied several times throughout their piece on the Roadster. The battery didn't run down twice, and it didn't break down either - they dramatized it all to make it look like the sort of thing that might happen if you owned the car - something that doesn't happen, since a few thousand people own those cars quite happily.

Or the debacle with Tesla trying to sue Fisker Automotive.

Why was it a "debacle"? Once again, it was a legitimate claim, whichever way the lawsuit went. Tesla simply felt that Fisker was giving them substandard designs while he worked on his own project, which isn't outside of the realms of possibility.

Also, how about Tesla constantly running out of money? Changing the prices of cars that people have already purchased, or asking the government--the U.S. Department of Energy for over $400 million dollars.

I'd love to see some evidence for this "constantly running out of money" claim. No, seriously, since I write about companies like Tesla for a living, and I'm always open to news. Last I heard Tesla was actually doing just fine - and using less DoE money than they thought - Elon Musk himself has said he prefers using money which isn't from grants.

That, and Tesla has even been in the black recently.

And, they haven't been "changing the price of cars that people have already purchased".

Like any vehicle in a new model year, the price often changes. Tesla have done this recently, but the price only changes for people who haven't yet put down deposits. The price current owners paid is actually identical to the price Musk announced over two years ago. In fact, Musk won a bet with journalist Dan Neil because he met every single target he promised he'd meet back in 2010.

Meeting all your promises doesn't sound much like the behavior of "a liar and a swindler".

What the F is Tesla doing with Taxpayer money? If he wants to build a business he should be able to do it on his own, not beg for money from the government.

You mean like Chevrolet and Chrysler didn't beg for money from the government? In amounts hundredfold more than Tesla has ever used?

Also, his cars are constantly being recalled.

No they aren't, unless you'd like to provide a source. I can provide a source quite happily, and the last one I can find is back in October 2010.

Maybe you're getting confused with Fisker? Fisker has had almost constant recalls (and fires, and battery shortages) since the Karma went on sale.

I don't even know how people can talk about Tesla and not think it's a huge joke.

Possibly because they know a great deal more about the company than you've demonstrated that you do.
 
It seems that you (Prototyp3) know very little about Tesla and their business practices. The Model S has given them an excellent, profitable car. They did take a grant from the government, but as HFS said, Chrysler and GM took a huge amount of money from the government. Tesla's cars have been very reliable, unbelievably so for such a new technology.
 


A very nice looking vehicle. 442ft lbs of torque at 0 rpm + 15,000 rpm.....nice, I wonder how much it dies off running towards that 15,000 rpm.....hmmm.
 
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Tesla's lawsuit on Top Gear was quite justified,

Prototyp3 is actually quite right about that particular part, even if he's biased as hell. I'd say that if it was justified for the not-quite-accurate reasoning you are giving the case wouldn't have been tossed out. Twice.

It wasn't as cut and dried as you were presenting it then, and it certainly isn't that straightforward now after the fact.
 
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Tesla website
Specifically, Top Gear misrepresented that:

The Roadster ran out of charge and had to be pushed into the Top Gear hangar by 4 men.
The Roadster’s true range is only 55 miles per charge (not 211).
One Roadster’s motor overheated and was completely immobilized as a result.
The other Roadster’s brakes were broken, rendering the car undriveable.
That neither of the two Roadsters provided to Top Gear was available for test driving due to these problems.

The breakdowns were staged and the statements are untrue. Yet the programme’s lies are repeatedly and consistently re-broadcast to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide on BBC television and web sites, and on other TV channels via syndication; the show is available on the internet, and is for sale on Top Gear DVD’s around the world.

Tesla wants people to know the truth, and correct the public’s misperceptions. The Roadster and its EV technology, as well as EVs generally, have been unfairly and viciously maligned by Top Gear.

Tesla simply wants Top Gear to stop rebroadcasting this malicious episode and to correct the record, but they’ve repeatedly ignored Tesla’s requests.

The new York Times
A close read of Tesla’s claims shows the company does not dispute that there was, in fact, a malfunction affecting the silver Roadster’s brakes during filming. Tesla blamed the issue on what it described as a “blown” fuse, which meant that the brake pedal “needed to be pressed down harder than would otherwise be the case.”

I did a quick bit of research, and it appears that Tesla claims that the BBC faked the failing of the cars. However, there is controversy about this.
 
Prototyp3 is actually quite right about that particular part, even if he's biased as hell. I'd say that if it was justified for the not-quite-accurate reasoning you are giving the case wouldn't have been tossed out. Twice.

It wasn't as cut and dried as you were presenting it then, and it certainly isn't that straightforward now after the fact.

Ah, I remember that :lol: Fair enough. Even so, TG's appraisal was hardly the most un-biased you'd see. It's unsurprising that actual Roadster owners don't seem to be having the issues mentioned on-screen, nor have any approached the 55-miles which TG recorded spinning in lots of circles.

Incidentally, none of that changes my opinion. Whether or not the court decides you have a case, a company has a right to claim damages should someone slander their product.

Nor does it change that prototyp3 was talking out of his backside throughout the rest of his post...
 
A lot of what I learned about them came from the documentary I listed and just reading various articles on the web.

I am pretty biased, just seems like every time I hear about Tesla Motors there is some controversy. As someone mentioned other car makers have also taken government money, I don't like it in those instances either.

The changing the price thing happens in the film. Musk has a meeting with a room full of people who've purchased the car, but have not yet received one, and tells them that to continue production they need more money.

Just doesn't sit well with me. It's interesting to hear they are in the black though, for now.

Btw, what publication do you write for?

Anyway, I knew I be stepping on toes in a Tesla post, but it just seems like there is always bad news about this company.
 
The publication is in my sig, Green Car Reports* (and Motor Authority, and a few others. I go where the work is!).

I'd urge you to read up on Tesla a little more - much of what you wrote is either misguided or simply untrue.

Some bad news is inevitable, of course - the auto industry is highly competitive (and struggling, at the moment), and Tesla is coming to market with "disruptive" technology - i.e. tech which challenges the status quo. It's also up against quite strong odds to start with - the last startup car company in the U.S. to survive was Chrysler, a company formed in 1925 - and Chrysler has only survived in recent decades due to bailouts and mergers. It's a cut-throat industry...

That said, much of what you were describing also sounds very much like the sort of struggles Fisker is having - in the last 12 months they've had everything from bad reviews, to vehicles catching fire, to recalls, quality issues, investment problems and production delays - and they're currently in a battle with their insurer, which is refusing to pay up for more than 300 vehicles destroyed at a port on the east coast during Hurricane Sandy. The company is almost cursed.

Tesla isn't perfect of course - Elon Musk comes out with some awfully weird stuff sometimes - but it's far from some corrupt business catastrophe.



* Incidentally, if you think writing for a green car site implies I'm biased, think again. Just have a look how much crap I got in the comments from genuinely biased people when I took a realistic view on Tesla's recent profits...
 
I'd trust Elon Musk as far as I could throw him.

BUT:

The Top Gear TV piece was more dramatized than real. What "reality TV" isn't nowadays? A lot of what's done and what happens on the show is for the sake of entertainment... from stunt drivers doing sideways clips for Clarkson to many of the "challenges" on the show. Hell, I've been watching Clarkson since the 90's (back when Top Gear was a radically different show), and it has always been obvious that Clarkson was more about the laughs than straight journalism.

And Tesla is one of the few "green" car companies to actually deliver what they promised and to progress beyond the vaporware stage to the multi-product stage. A lot of us were skeptical that they would survive this long, but not only have they survived, they've gotten two models out and have more coming. The original Roadster was an overweight, poorly finished Elise, but it actually ran, and it was pretty quick. Something you couldn't say of many electric concepts. The Model S seems to be shaping up to be something special, having none of the Roadster's compromises.

Again... I don't trust Musk. He does and says many stupid, outlandish things... but you can't argue with results.

Ultimately, that's how these cars should be judged... real world results. Not on hearsay.
 
I think the subtext behind Tesla's objection to the TG piece was that a vast, vast number of people learn everything they know about cars through TG (witness many posts on GTP to that effect!) and hang on Clarkson's every word, rightly or wrongly.

Thus, if TG says a Tesla Roadster only does 55 miles on a charge and goes wrong all the time, then huge swathes of the TV-watching population will think the Tesla Roadster only does 55 miles on a charge and goes wrong all the time. Which isn't a great corporate image.

Incidentally, they did similar in the Lancia episode, with the Hawk Stratos. There's a huge post on a forum from the owner of Hawk, who learned that the entire piece was manufactured to make the car look shoddy from the start. That, and not telling the owner they'd blown the engine and broken the door when they delivered it back to him...
 

And Tesla is one of the few "green" car companies to actually deliver what they promised and to progress beyond the vaporware stage to the multi-product stage. A lot of us were skeptical that they would survive this long, but not only have they survived, they've gotten two models out and have more coming. The original Roadster was an overweight, poorly finished Elise, but it actually ran, and it was pretty quick. Something you couldn't say of many electric concepts. The Model S seems to be shaping up to be something special, having none of the Roadster's compromises.

Again... I don't trust Musk. He does and says many stupid, outlandish things... but you can't argue with results.

Ultimately, that's how these cars should be judged... real world results. Not on hearsay.

Agree 1000% percent. Not only the model S is a quality product for an electric car, it's a quality car in overall. They still need to address the issues of mass-producing a technology that is fairly new, and therefore keep quality standards as high as they were perceived by the press.

I've got to admit that I always tend to overlook electric cars and not take them seriously, but the recent efforts like the Leaf, the Zoe and now the Model S put the electric car on the market as a feasible option for those who don't mind paying extra for novel technology. As battery technology keeps evolving we'll see better range, durability and less weight from the cells, there's ample space to evolve and perfect the electric car, I now believe that perhaps in 20 years you and I will be probably driving one to and from work.

Elon does make some rather lousy claims, but one can't deny that Tesla is finally coming together and he is directly responsible for that. You've got to applaud his enterpreneurship and boldness.
 
If Tesla was reported to be helping out Toyota with their hybrid systems, then they are obviously doing something right.

It's strange in that you can consider Tesla to be a new age Lotus of sorts.
 
I'm not feeling it, it looks a little mundane to me, like a mid-range Jag or Audi, nice but it almost seems like that was their remit, just electric

That said, much as I love the Roadster it does have understandable shades of the Elise, but is a little plainer IMHO, so it never really floated my boat either looks-wise, I just loved how preposterously quick it was/is.
 

Yup. It quite annoys me when I talk to "lesser" car people.

I've been seeing a lot of Model S driving around lately.

For those that think that the car looks bland, wait until you see one driving down the street. It's gorgeous. The lights make it instantly recognizable and the interior is one of the nicest I've ever seen.
 
I would love to drive the Model S, it looks great, has a lot of storage space and it's quiet. The only drawback is that it's a bit expensive. By the time I've got the money to buy one they've probably introduced new and better (and less expensive?) models.
 
It's very expensive, but I love that it actually competes on the market pricewise. You don't really pay a premium for the new tech.
 
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