Fifth Gear First Drives: Tesla Roadster

[dpeilow]

Tesla Roadster first drives - Fifth Gear

[doug]

Thanks. Looks like they drove VP18.


I wish they had some accompanying video with Tiff behind the wheel.

"...the fact that it only comes with left-hand drive."
Back at the Menlo Park store opening Darryl told me that they had to switch HVAC vendors in order to be able to do right-hand drive. I suppose once they get that worked out, they might think about entering the Japanese market.

[vfx]

And it should have included full screen versions of those beauty shots.

[Joseph]

The screen left of the driver's side says how many barrels of oil you've saved. Ha!

This is very interesting...

"The Tesla's batteries should last over five years, 500 recharging cycles and between 100,000 and 120,000 miles, and cost £5000 to replace at today's prices."

If the Roadster's batteries cost this little it would be great, but I really doubt it. Some mistake must've been made here; no where have I ever heard such a low price.

[JRP3]

Maybe they are hoping in 5 years from now the battery price will come down through mass production and increased volume?

[DaveD]

Judging by the cloud of smoke, they did a bit of torque testing with the traction control turned off.

[vfx]

re: smoke
Good thing the car has enough history behind it now that conspiracy theorists wont be claiming it has a gas engine in it.

[dpeilow]

By the way, this article was posted on June 23rd (I was a bit off the ball with this one ), so the car was probably with the original drivetrain spec. The article would have been written by a Fifth Gear 'staffer'. I understand the car will feature on the new series/season which starts tomorrow - though not on the first show.

I'm a bit disappointed with the 3/5 score. The article seems quite positive up to that point. It appears to derive from the high price (don't forget this is on a par with the Audi R8 over here, and this article neglects to include VAT at 17.5%) and I think playing it safe with a first UK review.

The £5000 battery price has to be a mistake. Unless Tesla negotiated a mega-deal, it would have to be around 3 times under reality.

Regarding RHD, having to source a new HVAC supplier is news to me, but I was told some reengineering was going on to move the equipment to accomodate a steering column on the right.

[tonybelding]

Way back shortly after the Roadster was first unveiled, there was some speculation about battery cost and replacement price.

Even though Tesla weren't telling, everybody pretty much pegged their cell cost over $20,000 per car, perhaps quite a bit over. Someone from Tesla then speculated that IF commodity li-ion pricing trends continued downward as they had in previous years, that the replacement cost should be somewhere around $12,000 by the time any of the ESS packs were worn out and needed replacement.

With all the excitement over automotive li-ion now, and the likelihood of strongly increased demand in the next several years, that prediction should be considered quite shaky.

Then again. . . No other car makers are using commodity li-ion cells. They are all going for new chemistries which may not impact the conventional "laptop battery" market all that much. Whenever car companies get involved with a supplier industry, they're accustomed to everything revolving around them, and their needs driving the market. That may not be true in batteries, at least for a while yet.

At the end of the day, the best answer is: Nobody Knows

[JRP3]

Harrigan: The expected battery life is 5 years or 100,000 miles. We consider the battery's end of life is when it reaches 80 percent of original capacity when recharged. The batteries are quite expensive. Today they cost $20,000. Over the next four or five years, we expect prices to come down substantially -- to the $12,000 range. They're coming down 8 percent a year recently. The cells we use in the battery packet are used in lots of different things, like laptops and power tools.

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