Tesla Motors, almost gone

I just wish we'd go back to lighter weight simplistic vehicles. For those of us who want them. Saw an interesting article in one of the recent magazines about the possibilities of a cottage industry of smaller cars that could be possible without the strict regulations imposed by the government. Oh well.

Still some interesting cars coming anyway... Fit hybrids, new CRXs, maybe some small diesel cars... Not like 50mpg is impossible to achieve these days.

Lightweight cars are a thing of the past. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=QKWpT7RwpL0

Mmhmm.

There was a wrecked CRX near my place of work some years ago. Got hit in the driver side. Whatever hit it was small, and went clean through the car and almost completely out the passenger door.

There were two down at the Brandywine junkyard that had been cut in half. One front to back, the other side to side. Fascinating to look at, mostly for what wasn't there. Essentially, the car was a pop-can blown out to the shape of frame rails and such.

Of all my cars, including the Spitfires and old Beetles and such, it was the CRX that I was the most worried about getting in a wreck in.

Yeah, sometimes E36 M3 happens.

Oh, some sort've editing going on here... Hah. Gotcha.

Side impact testing didn't even exist until suv numbers in the wild got high.

Coupefan wrote: Side impact testing didn't even exist until suv numbers in the wild got high.

The funny thing about this is that the Tesla Roadster passed all the tests it needed before they designed it - Lotus did it for them. However, when the new CEO's wife couldn't get in and out of the car easily with a dress on, they had to change the doors and frame. Good-bye crash-tested car, hello increased debt.

I hope the rest of the company's employees are smart enough to start looking for new jobs yesterday. A company that behaves like that is no place to work.

confuZion3 wrote:

Coupefan wrote: Side impact testing didn't even exist until suv numbers in the wild got high.

The funny thing about this is that the Tesla Roadster passed all the tests it needed before they designed it - Lotus did it for them. However, when the new CEO's wife couldn't get in and out of the car easily with a dress on, they had to change the doors and frame. Good-bye crash-tested car, hello increased debt.

Considering the market that they wanted, it's a pretty fair complaint. No everyone can live with an elise....

E-

Coupefan wrote: Side impact testing didn't even exist until suv numbers in the wild got high.

Actually, it goes back quite some time. Pull the door panels off of a Jensen Healey, what do you see? A side impact beam. I had to cut them out of the Abomination's doors to shed some weight, and that's based on a 1980 Spitfire.

The 1965 Spitfire we are putting back together doesn't have impact beams. Heck, the bumpers are just decorations, they don't do a damn thing.

I still say Tesla did it bass ackwards; they have a 4 door sedan that is supposedly nearly ready for production as well. That one would be their bread and butter money maker car, not the sports car. They should have concentrated on getting decent numbers of them in production, with a few roadsters (leave them in the 'electric Elise' form) as 'halo' cars. People would have turned out in droves to see the roadster, a few would stick around and buy a sedan because they have kids etc. and maybe one would actually buy a roadster. Not that the sedan is a bad looking design, this is supposed to be it: But no, they concentrated instead on the roadster, completely inverting the potential sales. Stupid.

Does that picture look alot like the new Camaro, or is it just me?

I still say Tesla did it bass ackwards; they have a 4 door sedan that is supposedly nearly ready for production as well. ....................

you are not going to sell $110K 4 door electric sedans....

they would have to be in the $30-$40k range and cannot be built in small numbers at that price.

I hope that there was some "hi tech" ideas that can be used by the next guys who have more business sense !

Allegedly the sedan will be around $60-70k compared to the roadster's $100-110k. Sure, that's way more than, say, an Accord hybrid but there are probably a good many people who would plunk down that kind of coin to be the first on their block to have a full electric car. There are rumblings that some cities have been considering using them as fleet vehicles as well. I would think it would be pretty easy to sell 5-6,000 of them the first year, thus helping recover some of their investment cost.

Maybe because that's the Chevy Volt and has jack nothing to do with Tesla???

I think they had a good idea, bring the first car to market aimed at price insensitive customers then move down market as the company gets established. It still takes a boat load of money and a lot skilled people to develop a new car model from scratch. Sounds like they are short on both now.

My favorite thing about Tesla? The coil

P71 wrote: Maybe because that's the Chevy Volt and has jack nothing to do with Tesla???

That is from Chevy's Volt Website, AFAIK the tesla emblem is not Photoshopped. It's the only (alleged) pic I can find of the Type S, which is Tesla's 5 passenger car. That's the killer; they have concentrated on the 'halo' car at the expense of the real moneymaker. Do a Google search for 'Tesla Whitestar' or 'Tesla Type S' and all you get is roadster pics.

In this press release, they say they have delivered 30 roadsters and taken deposits on 1200 so far. What if they had launched the sedan at the same time and gotten 5,000 orders? They'd be on top of the world. But nooooo.

http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=974

maybe chrysler can buy them and all will be saved...

... I think that we all needed that laugh.

confuZion3 wrote: The funny thing about this is that the Tesla Roadster passed all the tests it needed before they designed it - Lotus did it for them. However, when the new CEO's wife couldn't get in and out of the car easily with a dress on, they had to change the doors and frame. Good-bye crash-tested car, hello increased debt.

I don't think we can make a fair judgement without seeing the wife and dress in question

QuasiMondo wrote: Lightweight cars are a thing of the past. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=QKWpT7RwpL0

I guess that's either supposed to simulate being T-boned by a speeding freight train, or doing an all-out full-sideways drift into a concrete column some idiot left on the track.

Jensenman wrote: AFAIK the tesla emblem is not Photoshopped. It's the only (alleged) pic I can find of the Type S, which is Tesla's 5 passenger car.

I'd venture to say that it is, considering this is the exact same image, but it has a Chevy badge.

According to wiki (so take it with a grain of salt):

Wiki wrote: Tesla is also currently working on a sedan, originally code-named the "WhiteStar" and now known as the Model S, which will be introduced as a 2010 model... As of yet no pictures have been released on this model.

Wasn't there some controversy over the Volt and Tesla styling exercises looking very similar?

FWIW, it seems Tesla is suing a guy named Herik Fisker, they hired him to design the Whitestar. Turns out Fisker is planning to build a competing EV and Tesla immediately fired him. That probably has a lot to do with the lack of pics. This is supposer to be Fisker's car, called the Karma.

Yep, its all over I'm afraid. Now that gas is going to be under $2 again were going to right back to our evil ways. Looks like GM and others played it right, tease a bunch of prototypes and produce absolutely nothing.