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Tesla Appears on Big Guys' Map (2006 news item)

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danny

TMCing Since 2006
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Aug 15, 2006
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""We have the big guys sniffing around, talking about buying technology, even hinting about buying the whole company," says Harrigan.

Ford, Chrysler and Nissan have all made the visit to Tesla's base in California and expressed an interest in the company. But for now, says Harrigan, the high-performance electric car market is probably going to remain in the hands of smaller, non-traditional companies."-From http://environment.guardian.co.uk/travel/story/0,,1855609,00.html

Click here for the article.



PS. Thanks for the post in General Discussion about this.
 
Re: Tesla Appears on Big Guys' Map

Ford, Chrysler and Nissan are going to need help if they want to compete in the future.

I believe Toyota's long term plan includes EV vehicles. Hence consideration of the plug-in hybrid. Their approach is just different from Tesla's in that they planned to wean the masses by SLOWLY initiating them to the "stealth" of the electric motor while having the familiarity of the gas engine. A hybrid also allows Toyota to continue research on the electric side. As many magazines have stated, most hydrogen cars of the future are hybrids.

Unfortunately, Toyota is being Toyota (very conservative) although they have been daring as of late. Maybe Tesla's birth will force this "giant's" hand. Tesla on the other hand is made up of upstarts...

IMHO I think the future will have plug-in hybrids, electric cars that can have hotswappable options to become hybrids if necessary with any choice of power supply (gas, diesel, E85, hydrogen/fuel cell, etc...) in order to go long distance driving or off-roading. All the technology is here, it's just a matter of how much are we willing to pay.
 
@Takumi. In the near future you might be right. But in 30 years or so batteries will have improved dramatically, and may be the introduction of Flow-Cells or other new tech can change things to be even better. But we will not be using fossil fuels to any extent. Hybrids simply aren't a good idea. Nor is converting biomass to fuel. The only reason for assuming ICEs will be relevant, is in case electric energy storage does not improve enough. But I dont think that's gonna be the case.

If one method is superior in all relevant regards, then the market for other solutions will be very limited.
 
@Takumi. In the near future you might be right. But in 30 years or so batteries will have improved dramatically, and may be the introduction of Flow-Cells or other new tech can change things to be even better. But we will not be using fossil fuels to any extent. Hybrids simply aren't a good idea. Nor is converting biomass to fuel. The only reason for assuming ICEs will be relevant, is in case electric energy storage does not improve enough. But I dont think that's gonna be the case.

If one method is superior in all relevant regards, then the market for other solutions will be very limited.

That article is from 2006, and the last post to this thread before yours was from 2006 too. This thread should be locked.