Tesla Roadster--Response (2)

This was an interesting road-test article of the Tesla Roadster. I first saw this car in a movie called Batteries during Chemistry class.

Many people have concerns and questions about fuel-efficient and alternative energy cars. They are very comfortable with gasoline powered cars, but suspicious of new technology. From the articles I have recently viewed regarding fuel cell and electric cars, differences in performance are relatively minor. Both of these types of cars seem competitive with many gasoline-powered automobiles.

I thought it was amazing how the Tesla Roadster can travel over 200 miles on a single battery charge, and its only costs two dollars to recharge the battery. These cars are very expensive, though recharging is so inexpensive compared to gasoline, they might become cheaper than conventional cars, particularly if the price of gas climbs again.

There is one problem with these cars compared to fuel cell cars. They do use electricity which mostly comes from power plants that burn coal, oil and natural gas. In the future, maybe these greenhouse-gas producing plants will be replaced with wind, hydro or solar energy.

My two topics of fuel cells and electric cars could possibly be combined with stations run by fuel cells to replace gas stations. These stations could either recharge your car (which would probably take a few hours) or the stations could accept discharged batteries and some money in exchange for a recharged battery. Batteries would have to be standardized for this idea to work.

In the coming weeks I will be looking for articles about how electric batteries will be recharged and how hydrogen for fuel cells, might be distributed.

Tesla Roadster (2)

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/convertibles/112_0810_2009_tesla_roadster_one_speed/index.html

This is an article published on November 3, 2008 by Paul Horrell, who normally tests regular gasoline powered cars with a leading American automobile magazine. In his piece, he test drives the electric Tesla Roadster.

Overall he is extremely impressed. It has a single-speed transmission which replaced the previous two-speed transmission. He thought that the acceleration was tremendous. Tesla has tested the car's acceleration at 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Horrell comments on the acceleration: "And it's not just accurate and progressive, it's instant: as fast as you can stretch your foot, this thing delivers."

The Roadster also function like many hybrid cars in that it recovers energy when braking, but it also recovers energy whenever the accellerator is not being pressed. This is because the car partially brakes, causing resistance and energy which is stored in the battery.

Horrell gives many compliments about how well the car handles. He mentions how precise the steering is and that the car has excellent traction control. Traction control is actually easier to attain in an electric car, according to Horrell, compared to gasoline-powered cars.

The car has a range of over 200 miles before a recharge is necessary. It takes 3.5 hours to recharge the lithium ion and this equates to about two or three dollars. This is the equivilent of about 105 miles per gallon. This is pretty good considering it goes 125 miles per hour.