I like the article a lot. It was very positive for Tesla, and I think Jay's basic conclusions were insightful -- with regard to seeing a future for sports cars beyond oil, and also noting that Tesla did more than build a better electric car: they have built a better sports car. That's what you have to do, if you want to supplant the established technology.
However. . . There were a lot of little comments scattered throughout the article that I'd have to quibble over.
Tesla is not the first major manufacturer to have an electric car. GM came out with the EV1 in the early 1990s. I had one for a week and I loved it. It was quick but it only went about 125 miles on a charge. In 80 years it went only 10 miles further that my 1909 Baker Electric, and really a 125-mile range means you only have about a 60-mile range, because you have to come back.
His comparison between the EV1 and the Baker Electric is off base. Yes, you could probably get 100 miles out of a Baker, but here's how you do it. . . You put special low-rolling-resistance tires on the car, and set up a specially prepared smooth-and-level course. Then you drive the car at a steady 10 MPH around the course until the battery is dead. Early electric car makers pulled these kinds of stunts all the time so they could advertise 100-mile range, but none of them could achieve anything close to that in normal, real-world driving.
Nowadays we have something called an EPA driving cycle, which approximates the way people actually drive in their daily lives. The original EV1 with crappy Delco lead-acid batteries could go 60 miles on a charge. After the switch to Panasonic lead-acid batteries, it went up to 100 miles. After the switch to Ovonics NiMH batteries, it could do 130 miles. This was on real highways with hills, traffic, intersections, stop lights, and modern driving speeds. It had far greater capacity than early electrics like the Jay's Baker.
Jay doesn't see any real advancement in EV technology between 1909 and the appearance of the Tesla Roadster. The Roadster didn't spring into existence out of nothing, there were advances leading up to it. In 1959 the Henney Kilowatt was the first electric car with transistor-based power electronics. It wasn't commercially successful, but it was an important technical advance. The EV1 made another leap in power electronics (thanks to Alan Cocconi), and the Roadster is advancing that technology even further by taking it digital. Batteries have also advanced, first with NiMH and now with li-ion.
One of the hidden things they don’t tell you about electric cars is that you get good mileage when the temperature is 20C, but when it drops down towards freezing you lose 20-40% because they’re dependent on the ambient temperature. What Tesla has done is put in a cooling/heating system that keeps the battery at a constant temperature.
My understanding is that li-ion cells are much less impacted by cold than other chemistries. The ESS has an active cooling system, but I don't think it actually has an active heating system. It depends on the li-ion cells to self-heat as they are used.
It’s also built a car that weighs 2,600lb, which is a few pounds heavier than the standard Lotus, whereas most electric cars would be hundreds of pounds heavier.
A standard Elise tips the scales right around 2,000 pounds, so that makes the Roadster 600 pounds heavier. That's a lot of mass. The reason it can work is because the Elise is such an amazing flyweight car to begin with. Most of your sports cars on the road today are 3,000+.
I think Jay is a bit too hung up on the Elise connection. "A faster Elise" is what he calls it. Then he niggles over the price, which you'd think wouldn't be a big concern for him. Well. . . An Elise is a $45,000 car. Paying more than double that for "a faster Elise" might not seem sensible. From my standpoint, it makes more sense to compare the Roadster with cars it can run with, and most of them are a lot more expensive.
Lamborghini Gallardo SE = $200,000+
Ferrari F430 Spider = $200,000+
