Is that blue fluid next to the batteries an antifreeze mix of some sort to watercool the batteries? It looks like the back of the car to me, so I think that'd be a strange place to put the wiper fluid.

Out of curiosity, would climate control for the batteries be beneficial enough to help range? I know cooling is to keep them from exploding, which of course would seriously hurt the range. But say the system could also heat them on cold days so that the cars would be useful on a New England winter day, since I hear electric cars lose a ton of range in winter?

Drool...
gimme, gimme, gimme

AC motor, not DC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster#Motor

http://www.teslamotors.com/performance/tech_specs.php

kind of a big difference

--
MGR: Thanks, fixed.

Yah!! this will be great for all the people who can afford a $100k car, since gas prices are hitting them the hardest.....

"Yah!! this will be great for all the people who can afford a $100k car, since gas prices are hitting them the hardest....."

way to totally miss the point

Enlighten me then, what is the point?

Yup, you missed the point. All high-tech stuff starts out expensive but gets cheaper as it is mass-produced (an example: a 103-inch LCD TV was sold for over $100,000 for the last year, now its going mass-produced and the price is dropping to $60,000) (yeah, its a bad example of "too much", but a good example the price drop).

Round 1: Tesla is affordable by Joe Upper Class
Round 2: Tesla 2, Chevy Volt, Prius Plug-In option (all due in one to three years), affordable by Joe Upper Middle Class
Round 3: Everything else in 5+ years, affordable by Joe Six Pack

Never was there a more insignificant and irrelevant
car than the exorbitantly overpriced and underperforming Tesla roadster. Even Lotus' designers couldn't save this little flop from the junk heap of history. Starting with a totallly obsolete battery pack consisting of 8671 cells, each one ill-desinged for this application as well as being a member of a long since obsolete lithium ion generation one technology, the whole car is an
afterthought of poor thinking. For over $100,000 you would expect a vehicle to be able to handle a
relatively short trip to a destination 125 miles down the road. This little gem can't do that, or very much
else. battery-only electrics are the height of stupid, as in Hollywood and Silicon Valley dumb and dumber. When the Fisker Karma comes out, after
Tesla quits trying to sue them into nonexistence ,
the Tesla will be consigned to the junk heap of history by a car that not only looks twice as good, carries three times as many passsengers, can take you anywhere you want to go, all the while avoiding virtually the same amount of gasoline and emissions as the totally impractical Tesla, and get there plenty fast. DSorry, Tesla, your day in the sun, compliments of some brainless Holltwood environmentalists is just about over.

Wow, someone is emotional.

The market for cleaner cars is wide open, and there's space for more than one approach. I love series hybrids like the Volt and Fisker, but they also have downsides (you carry that engine around all the time, you still have most of the downsides of gas cars when it comes to maintenance, etc).

Tesla has mentioned that they are considering making hybrids too,btw.

Ah yes arthur glen is surely a drill more oil will solve everything republican.

What IS the deal with the rabid fanboy-ism? The difference between the Tesla and the Karma, for one, is that you can actually go and buy a Tesla. Well, you can't really because there's a waiting list, but they are out there on the roads.

Yes, I think plug-in/series hybrids are the way forward for the foreseeable future, but the fact is that there isn't one out there yet (other than expensively modded Priuses). The Karma seems to be a vaguely promising project, but I'll believe it when they actually start rolling off the production line - FWIW, until there were credible reports of Teslas being shipped to buyers, I still had suspicions of the Tesla project being just vapourware.

But still - what's with the "my favourite technology is the only decent one, everything else is crap and irrelevant and a waste of time"? That attitude is not going to solve our energy/climate problems...

the numbers don't match up.

Picture 1: Number 3 is I don't know what, maybe the power module, number 4 is definitely the frame, not the battery

Picture 2: Number 3 is definitely the battery pack (not the power module) and number 4 is definitely the power module (not the battery pack), number 5 is a bumper, which needs labelling, apparently.

Tesla, TH!NK, AC Propulsion, Lightning Cars, Liberty Electric Cars...

It's all necessary. As Gordon Brown argues uncontroversially; "a sustainable economy is THE challenge for this century"

And, obviously, finite fossil fuels cannot be a part of a sustainable economy.

Cheers

Barry Shrier