The Tesla Electric Roadster, a FAST electric car
/. has a link to a Wired News story and the usual entertaining and thought provoking comments about test driving the Tesla Roadster, an electric car that can achieve 0-60 mph in around 3 seconds? Wow. And designed by Barney Hatt of Lotus Design in England? Double WOW.
I’ve just gotta wonder about the 6,831 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power it though. Imagine if it has the same problem as MacBooks and Dell Laptops times 6831.
Still, it’s very cool that a car has come out of the Silicon Valley. Investors include an incredible array of Internet Superstars, according to Wired; “PayPal cofounder Elon Musk, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and ex-eBay chief Jeff Skoll . . .” The creator, Martin Eberhard, has never until now had anything to do with the car industry, but is instead an electronics genius. Outsourcing by current car companies made building the car much easier than it would have been 20 years ago, since most parts and systems were readily available.
According to Joshua Davis of Wired, the hardest thing to get used to was the lack of sound, “It’s an eerie, disconcerting feeling. There’s no engine hum — nothing to make you think that this car should be sold with a neck brace. Most high-performance cars telegraph their power. That’s part of the allure of a seriously fast car — you can hear it coming. The Roadster seems like a sneak attack.”
[tags]Sustainability, alternative energy, Tesla Roadster, Electronic Sports Car, Lotus, Silicon Valley, Martin Eberhard[/tags]
