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Technology Stocks : The Electric Car, or MPG "what me worry?" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric who wrote (365)	9/28/2008 12:11:51 PM
From: Eric	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17569

It has been almost 24 hours since I drove the Tesla Roadster and I wanted to make a few comments about it. My friend Harv (an Alaska Airlines captain), another friend visiting from Germany and myself drove to an empty Kmart parking lot in Bellevue, Washington yesterday morning to test drive the Tesla Roadster. We arrived 15 minutes before our scheduled drive at 9am. The parking lot was approximately 800 feet on a side with cones set up as a closed circuit race course almost a 1/2 mile long. The car was sitting in one corner of the lot plugged into a large 50 KW portable generator. We introduced ourselves to the approximately 7 or 8 Tesla folks who were just setting up a reception area. Since Harv and I had the first scheduled drives there were only a few onlookers taking pictures of the car. After meeting the the person in charge of sales at Tesla we were introduced to the lead tech in charge of supporting the car. The first batch of drivers were finally assembled and we were given instructions of how the car operated and the parameters for driving the course. We were given permission to drive the car without a Tesla person in the car. After signing release forms Harv and myself strapped ourselves into the Roadster for the first drive of the day. The course starts out with about a 600 ft straightaway terminating at a stop line approximately 150 feet before ending up on a sidewalk and street. I pushed the pedal to the floor and the car took off. Boy does this thing accelerate. I've had the pleasure of driving a number of high performance sports cars over the years but nothing came close to this in acceleration! Stopping power was impressive also and after 5 laps on the course brought the car back to the start line to let Harv switch places with me. Since he rode along with me he had the advantage of feeling what the car could do as I was driving it. He pushed the car right to the edge of control and at one point I thought we would launch ourselves out of the lot and onto the street! Needless to say my breath was taken away. This guy likes to take it to the edge! Since the parking lot was dotted with light poles with 3 foot square concrete bases I was concerned that we would accidentally slam into one as we drifted sideways a few feet a couple times while going through the S-turns. Harv finally brought the car to the start line and we got out so the next pair of drivers could get in and do their drive. The Tesla folks commented that "someone had finally really pushed the car to it's limits" and the assembled folks applauded his performance. My heart was still pounding and I was a little bit pissed off because on one straightaway run we almost ended out on the street! By then a small crowd of people had showed up and were watching from the sidelines. After 5 more folks had driven the car it was brought back to the generator to be charged up a little. It wasn't really necessary but they did it to show how easy it was to "plug the car in" and give the Tesla folks time to talk to the next batch of folks who would drive the car. During this time I had more time to talk to the head of Sales and the senior tech about the car. Tesla has plans to come out with more than one version of the S sedan and at this time it looks like the first one will come off the assembly line in late 2010. Demand is so great for the Roadster that it looks like the price will continue to be bumped up every year for at least the next two years. The S sedan will probably have 4 variants with various accessories and battery pack sizes. They are planning on staying in the "high price segment" for quite some time due to demand. They are aiming to give BMW some serious competition in a few years and I think they can pull it off. They are committed to a replacement program for the current battery packs and will offer longer range packs in a few years. So it looks like we will have a 500 + mile range Roadster in a few years with the new cells they are currently evaluating. I guess the one impression that really sunk in after driving the car was just how well it handled. It has a degree of balance in hard turns that I have not felt before in other sports cars. The ride was very controlled and softer than I expected. While Harv was driving really hard through the S turns I noticed that there was virtually no body sway, the car was really glued to the pavement. It out cornered and out accelerated any car that I have ever driven. The car we drove was prototype # 9 of the original first batch of ten cars from Lotus. It had the final "1.5 drive package" of transmission, motor and controller (inverter). It also had the very first single speed production BorgWarner transmission. If you folks have any questions I would be happy to answer.