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tonybelding
Active Member
For me it was the AutoblogGreen coverage of the unveiling back in July of last year. It was also, incidentally, the first time I'd ever heard of AutoblogGreen, which has since become my favorite site for electric car news.
Video here: The unveiling of the Tesla Motors Electric Car
Video here: The unveiling of the Tesla Motors Electric Car
News coverage (linked from my.yahoo.com) of the unveiling party lead me to their web site, then on to the blogs. The rest is history as they say.
I have a few friends who were involved with Telsa before they made news of the Roadster public, so I am surprised I didn't hear about it sooner. They did a good job of keeping their "project" secret until the company was ready to show the world what they had been doing.
I have a few friends who were involved with Telsa before they made news of the Roadster public, so I am surprised I didn't hear about it sooner. They did a good job of keeping their "project" secret until the company was ready to show the world what they had been doing.
For some reason, I didn't come across Tesla Motors until November of last year.
I had followed the development of fuel cell cars for some years (since at least 1998), and done as much reading as I could on Mercedes' and Honda's prototypes. (I went so far as to buy a few shares in Ballard, the fuel cell manufacturer -- a good lesson in the financial consequences of misunderstood physics.)
At some point, I ran across AC Propulsion's T-Zero. Then, in April or May last year, I remember being taken with a Business 2.0 article on the WrightSpeed X1. A month or so later came news of Prof. Schindall's (MIT) adaptation of carbon nanotubes to enhance capacitor storage capabilities, and a couple of weeks later, news of a French researcher enhancing battery capacity with a similar technique. At that point, it became clear to me that fuel cells were out, and batteries (and perhaps eventually capacitors) were in.
I can't remember exactly how I came across Tesla Motors. Whatever the case, I still have the email I sent on the same day -- November 10 -- to my then-girlfriend, with the subject: "So, like, this is my new dream car..."
I had followed the development of fuel cell cars for some years (since at least 1998), and done as much reading as I could on Mercedes' and Honda's prototypes. (I went so far as to buy a few shares in Ballard, the fuel cell manufacturer -- a good lesson in the financial consequences of misunderstood physics.)
At some point, I ran across AC Propulsion's T-Zero. Then, in April or May last year, I remember being taken with a Business 2.0 article on the WrightSpeed X1. A month or so later came news of Prof. Schindall's (MIT) adaptation of carbon nanotubes to enhance capacitor storage capabilities, and a couple of weeks later, news of a French researcher enhancing battery capacity with a similar technique. At that point, it became clear to me that fuel cells were out, and batteries (and perhaps eventually capacitors) were in.
I can't remember exactly how I came across Tesla Motors. Whatever the case, I still have the email I sent on the same day -- November 10 -- to my then-girlfriend, with the subject: "So, like, this is my new dream car..."
I found out about tesla through one of the car news sites such as jalopnik or autospies. I found out about the car when it still had a sheet covering it and a countdown on the website to the cars unveiling. I then went to see it a few days after it was unveiled, I believe, at the Perterson Auto Museum in Los Angeles. They were showing the black prototype.
I had been watching the Wrightspeed X1 with interest, and had just seen "Who Killed the Electric Car" movie, and "Inconvenient Truth" which had both put me in the mindset to be very receptive to the unveiling. It would have been an exciting unveiling regardless, but all of these things combined to make it somewhat magic.
Tesla found a way to make a big splash from the get-go like no other electric car in history. GM's EV1 was perhaps the only other to create a real "buzz". The RAV4-EV was (and still is) a great vehicle, but it seemed to show up with much less fanfare.
Tesla found a way to make a big splash from the get-go like no other electric car in history. GM's EV1 was perhaps the only other to create a real "buzz". The RAV4-EV was (and still is) a great vehicle, but it seemed to show up with much less fanfare.
