Tesla Motors comes through for us!

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

What blessing upon the natural environment this technology will be. As of 2008, Tesla is releasing their new line of all-electric cars. Unlike our electric predeccesors, the car will have more power than anything I've yet to see. Using lithium-ion batteries, it can go 245 miles on a single charge and excellerate from 0-60 in under 4 seconds, out-doing the porsche. While starting at $98,000, they expect the prices to drop dramatically once the technology becomes mainstream; their spokesman validly pointing out that microwaves, VCR's, and DVD players were all substantially expensive upon their market initiation.

I'm very happy about this. The state of the environment has always been a huge concern to me, and while I initially supported hydrogen-fueled vehicles, I later found out that they require just as much pollution-generating energy to produce the hydrogen as would be burned with conventional cars.

The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119220246200657368.html?mod=hpp_us_personal_jour nal)

[4twentE]

That's awesome. Like all technology though, I'll have to wait for the price drop when it's not really all that cool anymore before i can afford it. But hell yeah, I'd be happy to buy an electric car. 0-60 in under 4 sec is bad ass. Being completely silent would be kinda strange though. I might have to add a bad ass engine sound effects machine for the psychological satisfaction.

[killerweed420]

Of course you still have the pollution of the manufacturing of these cars plus the very toxic batteries.Still a way off from a truely green car.

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Of course you still have the pollution of the manufacturing of these cars plus the very toxic batteries.Still a way off from a truely green car.


Manufacturing is polluting no matter what type of car it is. The point is that the biggest polluting aspect, the car's combustion system, is now taken care of. Eventually, hopefully, we'll have all-clean power grids to do away with the manufacturing issue as well. As for the pollution of the batteries; the benefit of taking fossil fuels out of the air is considerably more important, and conventional cars are going to have toxic batteries as well anyway.

[slipknotpsycho]

i'd still go for this instead....

Electric Car: Chevrolet Volt: Chevrolet (http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/)

in the event you run out of battery you're not screwed... and the mpg is absolutely mind numbing...


Expect an estimated 150 equivalent miles per gallon when you use this electric battery and gasoline-combination to drive approximately 60 miles per day.


and it can still use 'green fuels' rather then gasoline....

looks pretty sexy imo too

[Cooter McDoogle]

How clean do you think electricity is? Comes from alot of coal combustion, eh?

We should try to be more efficient by actually being more efficient. Even the Chevy Volt which is an excellent concept (w/ any electric car) weighs a ton more than it needs to. How many people need 1.5 tons of metal following them around everywhere they go. If gas prices would continue to increase, which they will, people are going to learn to use scooters for short commutes, not drive suvs, drive subcompacts for everyday driving instead of sedans, not use giant diesel semis if they happen to run a shipping company, and maybe even walk a place or two. Everybody's going to have to shape up soon. You can't have a truly green way to transport a person around inside a four doored cage.

Anyways I'm glad to hear of an electric car release in 08. Definitely a step in the right direction.

[slipknotpsycho]

well, it is hard to drop both weight and price when it comes to electric cars... batteries weigh a lot themselves, and they are expensive... they are two humps these companies are still trying to overcome.

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

How clean do you think electricity is? Comes from alot of coal combustion, eh?


Absolutely, and that's why we need to move to clean-energy sources like wind, tidal, solar, geothermal etc. Seldom is one form of energy completely independant of others, it has to be a joint and expansive effort.