I am posting some pictures from the Tesla event. Take notice of the roof of the Model S, the logo turn signals on the side, the smooth door handles. The interior was the made of the softest leather I have ever felt. I hope they keep much of these features in the production vehicle, which is slated for a 2011 release.
This was an amazing reception for the re-unveiling of the Model S held in the National Building Museum. Tesla had setup an oval track around the inside of the building where they were allowing people to ride in the roadster, the electric Smart, and then the Model S. The roadster moved out side for a test on the roads of D.C. I was able to talk with several Tesla engineers and employees and will share all the details. The reception was so beautiful that my camera doesn’t do it justice so I tried to take as many videos as I could. Here are a few of the pictures I did take. I arrived about 15 minutes early but that seemed to be very early as I was able to be 8th in line to ride the roadster around the track.
Here is a video of the reception floor.
I posted the teaser shots a about a month back and here are some full shots of the reported model S. some are calling it The S. At about half the cost of the orginial Tesla roadster, the four door sedan should be around $50K.
Take a look at the full length telematics screen, I have a lot of experience working with telematics and this screen would offer plenty of real estate to show the driver information such as State of Charge, regen, charging times, current draw in/out, motor RPM, etc etc… The interface could also be used for non driving entertainment proposes such as surfing the web or video games. I would like to see Tesla give me the ability to start the car from my office computer, or unlock the doors from my cell phone.
[Kevin]
I thought with the bounce in the economy we should take a look at how the car company’s are doing as of the close of the market on Tuesday. A mid-week analysis is better than either Friday or Monday due to those days having more fluctuations than other days of the week.
GM (GM) is up to $3.20 from a low of $1.27
Ford (F) is up to $2.86 from a low of $1.01
Chrysler which is owned by Cerberus a privately held investment firm. However Chrysler is in a deal with Fiat to assume %35 of Chrysler’s debt, so let see how they are doing.
Fait (FIA.MI) is up to $4.73 from a not so low $3.32.
On the import side we have,
Toyota (TM) is up to $63.59 from a low of $55.41
Honda (HMC) is up to $23.19 from a low of $17.35
Nissan (NSANY) is up to $7.74 from a low of $5.59
So obviously the American car company’s got hit the hardest in the wake of the US downturn. However, I think there is some potentially good buys in the American car company’s if one has enough faith that they will recover. I personally believe that if GM can pull off the Volt then we will all be wishing we had bought some GM stock at $1.27 a share. But that is just it, it’s completely speculative!! Just for fun, lets pretent that we purchases 1000 shares of each company listed at today’s prices and we will revisit our stocks in a few months to see how they have fared.
GM and Chrysler have to submit their viability plans to Congress before they will be allowed access to some $17.4 Billion in government loans. Ford isn’t at this hearing because they still have a large amount of cash but have said that if the economy doesn’t turn around soon they too may have to ask for help. I will update this as I learn information today on how the proceedings are going. As for my personal opinion, I believe we as a country need to do anything necessary to keep the big three a float so that they can get these amazing electric vehicles on the road. If GM has to restructure under bankruptcy protection, I am sure that the release of the GM Volt would be slowed and that’s not what we need. Chrysler has some of the best planned electric vehicles, from the 200c to the Circuit and the all wheel drive Jeep. We can’t let Chrysler falter either because they would delay or even halt the release of competition against GM’s Volt. We all know competition is good for the buyer.
My best laid plan for GM is the following:
Sell off the following units in this order starting with the worst and heading towards the salvageable ones, Hummer, SAAB, Saturn, GMC, Buick.
Keep the following units Chevrolet , Cadillac, and Pontiac.
No one cares about SAAB and their vehicles just cut into core Chevy vehicle sales. I never understood why you have a separate GMC brand, just rename those trucks to Chevy and everything will work just the same. There is nothing special about Buick, I know the name has history but right know its just old people cars, these cars are just nicer then Chevy models and not as nice as Cadillac models. I understand Buick is popular overseas so let it be an overseas brand or sell it to and overseas company. If GM made Buick an overseas brand only it might have the effect of increasing the popularity here in the US if you can’t buy them here, people always want what they can’t have. I understand you want Pontiac to be the new performance brand and I am behind that idea, however you have to make up for the stigma of Pontiac being a lower quality car. We all know Pontiac’s were crap in the 80’s, they had the worst service record.
Let America see that you are trying to get the US off of foreign oil by holding to your promise of releasing the GM Volt and other plug-in electric vehicles. These vehicles must be your next big release and nothing before that.
GM and Chrysler need to work on returning these brands to their Made in the USA status, too many of the vehicles are produced in Mexico and Canada. Bring those jobs home!
Good luck GM and Chrysler!
I found this information at Autobloggreen, for more detail, which are sparce right now, head over to their site for the details.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/02/12/first-official-teaser-photo-of-the-tesla-model-s-appears/
I am not sure about the name of this vehicle but it is a concept vehicle from Toyota that is about the size of the Smart vehicle although it felt slightly smaller. It is an all electric plug-in and I could not find any other information about it, if anyone knows anything please some comments.
This is the PLUG-IN electric car for the Saturn line up. The unque features are that the windows that take up most of the car and the car is missing the B pillar, this would make anyone wonder about the crash test performance but I am sure the engineers at GM have come up with some way of reinforcing the body. Also the car has an all electric range of 34 miles and I am assuming is a series hybrid with a 3 cylinder 1.3L TURBO DIESEL engine as the range extender. GM says they are targeting a 2010-2011 timeline on this vehicle.
I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said before, but I will say that this is the first car I will buy as soon as it hits the market. My plan for this website and its sister site is to help get information out there about how to squeeze more performance/range out of a production electric vehicle. In these pictures you can see the telematics package that seems like it will be stock with the vehicle. The Volt is a really slick car that I can only hope actually hits the street in 2010 like GM has promised, but we know how GM is about keeping their promises.
WOW was this an amazing sight, a nude Tesla roadster with out its body shell. I must say the engineering (from an engineers standpoint) is unbelievable on this car. The battery box and motor housing looked to be designed better than I could have imagined. I must also say that props goes out the Lotus on the frame it-self, very nice work indeed. The rep told me that production is up to 100 a month and that they are currently working on a two speed transmission but don’t know when that will be available but hope that it will be ready for the next updated version of the roadster so that it can reach even higher speeds.
