Quote:
Originally Posted by malcolm
So is this a call for a third gear?
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Depends on how you plan to use the car. The two gears, with their ratios, make them well suited for use on roads and highways, but for tracks that enable speeds above 100 MPH, the Tesla Roadster has problems.
At such high speeds, even in second gear, you're well past the peak HP point of the motor and see a steady loss in power until you hit the redline.
I think the two-speed transmission can be made to work by making both first and second gear significantly longer... your 0-60 time will suffer but your high-speed performance will improve.
The other choice is, obviously, to add more gears. I wouldn't stop at 3 gears, though; I'd go for 4 to have a good set of choices for various track and road conditions. 1st gear for 0-60 demos, 2nd and 3rd for racing, 4th for top speed demos and very long straights in races.
The other thing I'd like to see is more horsepower. Most of the cars that have comparable 0-60 times as a Tesla Roadster will easily defeat the car on a track. I think getting more horsepower is mainly limited by battery technology, at the moment...
In any case, I expect Tesla to do all of the above if they survive long enough. (Maybe for a $200,000 track-optimized edition of the Roadster or something).
-Ryan