Tesla: Hypercar, or Hypemobile?

If you've been paying attention to the motoring news in the past two years - or at a very minimum, not living under a rock - then you've most likely heard of the Tesla Roadster.  If you've been enjoying your rock abode, I'll provide a few "Clif Notes."  The Tesla is a small electric sports car, assembled by a bunch of dreamers in California, that uses a lightly modified version of the Lotus Elise's aluminum-and-resin-bonded chassis, but with a bunch of laptop batteries in place of that wretched Toyota 4 cylinder in the Elise.

On paper, this sounds quite good - the nimble, light chassis of an Elise, zero emissions, and that delicious, instantaneous torque that electric motors provide.  By design, an electric motor provides it's maximum torque output at just above idle.   This is why vapid Prius drivers who aren't paying attention seem to squeal their tires at every stoplight, like a prat. Now, I won't go into the myriad political issues and inter-company fighting that has gone on at this ambitious startup company - suffice to say they've had a revolving door of CEO's, more delays than the original Focus  RS, and they've been pretty much unable to find a transmission that doesn't blow up.

Despite all this, I like the Tesla. It is proof that there is original thinking in the automotive design realm, that there are different solutions to age old problems, and that there is hope for the automobile in the future.

As a sports car, the specifications are pretty tempting.  The Tesla now uses a single-speed fixed gear transmission with an electrically actuated parking lock and a mechanically driven lubrication pump.  The engine is a 375 volt A/C induction air-cooled motor with a variable frequency drive - which is why it only needs one gear.  It produces the equivalent of 248 horsepower and 276 lb-ft of torque (375nm), with an (admittedly irrelevant) redline of 14,000 rpm.  It draws power from a large array of lithium-ion battery cells - 6,831 of them, to be exact.

In EPA testing, it had a rated range of 220 miles.  Tesla claims the 2723 lb Roadster can accelerate to sixty miles an hour in under 4 seconds, and reach a top speed of 125 miles an hour.  Heady stuff indeed. The performance is real.  Top Gear tested the Tesla roadster on their latest episode, where it spanked a standard 2ZZ-GE powered Elise in a drag race, and posted a lap time of 1:27.2 seconds - the same time as a (997) 911 GT3.  It was also only 3/10ths of a second slower around Top Gear's track than the Exige, the hardtop hardcore version of the Elise.  That's impressive considering it's less powerful and weighs in excess of 700 pounds more.

There are some problems, though.  As with many electric cars, the expected range doesn't really have any bearing whatsoever in reality - Clarkson claimed the Tesla only managed about 55 miles before rolling to a stop, out of electrons to continue the silent fun.  Also, Tesla claims the Roadster can go from empty to full in 3.5 hours - using their exclusive High Power connector.  Using standard household current, it takes... 16 hours. The biggest problem is that the Tesla will lose every drag race with the other "performance electric car," the awkward-looking Commuter Cars Tango. Considering the Tango looks like this, that could be considered mildly embarrassing.

This video was shot at Infineon Raceway on November 30th.  The Tango ran the quarter mile in 14.480 seconds with a trap speed of 92.5 miles per hour, beating the Tesla's time of 14.666 seconds with a trap speed of 101.23 mph.  While this is mostly academic (does anyone care how fast electric sports cars run the quarter mile?), it's worth noting that the Tesla was an early production model with the old 2-speed gearbox, and the Tango's battery packs weren't fully charged.

httpvh://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiS4t8TMlI

So, like any brand new concept, the Tesla has it's issues.  Still, for the first serious attempt at a true electric sports car, it shows great promise.  Tesla seems like a highly motivated and original company, and I wouldn't be shocked (no pun intended) if they continued to develop the Roadster into a world-class sports car.  They've got a darn good head start.  This is pretty solid evidence that people like me don't need to lose sleep over the eventual demise of the internal combustion engine - if the alternatives are this tempting, I suppose I wouldn't mind!