Filed under: Transportation

To date, since production began in March, 27 Tesla Motors Roadsters have been delivered. Now the production rate is expected to ramp considerably thanks to a deal with BorgWarner to build the enhanced “Powertrain 1.5.” The Telsa designed, single-speed gearbox is expected to help provide 30% more power allowing the Roadster to once again accelerate from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds as it did with the original, flawed, two-speed transmission. It’s also more efficient resulting in an extended, 244-mile range (221 miles currently) from a single charge. All Roadsters equipped with the interim transmission will be upgraded free of charge. Tesla says that it will now ramp production to 10 Roadsters per week, hitting 20 per week within a few months, and 40 per week by early 2009. Most of which we expect to find riding the PCH in total, luxurious, battery-powered silence.

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Filed under: Transportation

Well, would you have a look at that. That, dear friends, is Lightning’s immaculate GT — a £120,000 ($239,400) motorcar that is just one of two vehicles in the world to rely on lithium-titanate battery technology. Said innovation enables the vehicle to go from dead to fully charged in “just minutes,” though you will have to find a location that provides three-phase industrial power in order to see the benefits over traditional Li-ion cells. The firm’s Chris Dell asserts that the nearly exclusive quick charge tech more than justifies the exorbitant price tag, and he’s even looking to UK-based businesses to hopefully strike a deal in which motorists can swing by, juice up and be on their way while traveling. Anxious to take delivery? Looks like you’ll be waiting until sometime next year.

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Filed under: Transportation

Move over, Elon Musk — the Tesla owners club is about to get bigger. The upstart electric-car company announced the delivery of the first nine production Roadsters to customers in California earlier this week, with several more to follow at the rate of four per week, and the plan is to start building 100 a month by December, when that new transmission is ready. That’s pretty ambitious, but Tesla’s brought in some big guns to help make it happen — the company just hired Mike Donoughe as EVP of Vehicle Engineering and Manufacturing. Donoughe is fresh off a 24-year stint at Chrysler, where he was most recently in charge of revamping all of the company’s mid-size sedans. Word on the street is that Donoughe could have written his own ticket at any major carmaker, so it’s interesting that he landed at Telsa, where he’ll be working on the Model S as well as the Roadster. Oh, and there’s a new Tesla store in Menlo Park, in case you were looking to blow a quick $100K in Silicon Valley — aren’t we all?

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Filed under: Transportation

Nary two months after the Tesla Roadster finally hit production, the automaker’s first dealership has swung its doors wide open. Not surprisingly, the establishment is planted in gridlock heaven, better known as Los Angeles, California. Even less shocking is the fact that it opened at one of the busiest intersections in the city — near the practically useless (we kid… sort of) 405 freeway and the always-packed corner of Santa Monica and Sepulveda boulevards. Of course, the 10,000-square-foot dealership isn’t exactly rolling cars off of the showroom floor just yet (something about a lingering transmission issue), but it’s hoping the $2 million cost of construction more than pays itself off in a couple of years. And if you’re hankering for a Telsa Motors store near you, you can look forward to others popping up in Menlo Park (CA), New York, Miami, Seattle and Chicago in the next year or so.

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Filed under: Transportation

The drama surrounding the Tesla Roadster’s transmission and the company’s attempts to build a system that can transmit power from the motor to the wheels without breaking under the strain took another strange twist today, with the revelation the that first supplier Tesla contracted to design the part is suing the company for $5.6M. Magna Powertrain USA says Tesla hired it to develop a two-speed transmission in September 2006, and when things fell behind schedule, Tesla canceled the contract and walked away without paying. Saucy! Of course, problems with the proposed two-speed transmission are why Tesla plans to ship early production Roadsters with “temporary” one-speed units and swap them out later, but there’s no word on where the two-speed versions are going to come from apart from Tesla saying “We need to have more control over our fate and manage the process in house.” Sure, sure, just as long as we get one for “testing,” okay?

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Filed under: Transportation

Tesla VP of Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Service, Darryl Siry, set the record straight on the whole airbag wavier thing: in case it wasn’t already clear, the Roadster does indeed have driver and passenger airbags. The waiver was regarding the fact that currently “front passenger airbag does not vary its deployment based on the weight of the passenger,” and thus needed the waiver not unlike other boutique automakers (he cites the Ferrari F430 as an example). Of course, this misunderstandings and misinformation might have been mitigated if Telsa just addressed the issue at the time (instead of waiting a month after the fact); we can only hope their non-metaphoric airbags don’t take as long to deploy.

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Filed under: Transportation

Tesla VP of Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Service, Darryl Siry, set the record straight on the whole airbag wavier thing: in case it wasn’t already clear, the Roadster does indeed have driver and passenger airbags. The waiver was regarding the fact that currently “front passenger airbag does not vary its deployment based on the weight of the passenger,” and thus needed the waiver not unlike other boutique automakers (he cites the Ferrari F430 as an example). Of course, this misunderstandings and misinformation might have been mitigated if Tesla just addressed the issue at the time (instead of waiting a month after the fact); we can only hope their non-metaphoric airbags don’t take as long to deploy.

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Filed under: Transportation

It’s shots like these of the Tesla Roadster getting pwned passing those federal safety tests that make vast government bureaucracy worth it, don’t you think? A full gallery over at AutoBlog.

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Filed under: Transportation

Between all the hoopla surrounding “temporary transmissions” and ever-shifting EPA range targets, one critical aspect of the Tesla Roadster’s long, strange trip to market has been mostly overlooked: federal safety approval. Yep, no matter how sleek, fast, and quiet the little red (green) machine might be, Uncle Sam still needed to make sure the signals signaled and the bumpers bumped — but according to a post on the Tesla blog by a VP named Malcom Powell, the Roadster is now fully approved and can legally go on sale. Don’t jump for the piggy bank just yet, though — while Elon Musk will be getting his straight off, everyone else will have to wait until March 17th for the production line to kick into gear. Once that happens, though, Tesla says it’ll churn out 40 of the $100,000 cars per week — so hopefully that waiting list’ll get trimmed soonish.

[Via TG Daily]

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Filed under: Transportation

We’d heard that problems with the Tesla Roadster’s transmission were going to lead the company to ship the cars with “temporary” transmissions, but our friends over at AutoblogGreen were recently contacted by Tesla and told that while the company is indeed considering shipping cars with a different tranny than originally planned, they won’t be designed to fail, as we’d originally heard. Rather, it’ll be a single-speed transmission that won’t allow the all-electric hot rod to run as fast as the planned two-speed version. Tesla still plans to swap out the units for the real deal when they’re finally strong enough to handle the electric’s massive torque, but at least now when Tesla owners are stranded by the side of the road they’ll just need an extension cord, not a whole new transmission.

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Filed under: Transportation

The Tesla Roadster was supposed to be out before the end of the year, but it looks like the wicked-fast electric car won’t make that target — apparently the company is having problems finding a transmission strong enough to handle gear shifts while the car remains at full torque. The problem is somewhat unique to electric cars, and Tesla’s got two different suppliers scrambling to find a solution — but in the meantime, the company is considering providing vehicles outfitted with “temporary” transmissions that are basically guaranteed to fail after a few thousand miles. The first of these has already been built for company chairman Elon Musk, and Tesla is deciding whether to start shipping cars with the temporary units to other customers and then replacing them when a final transmission becomes available. That’s the price of progress, we suppose, but something tells us quite a few people would rather just wait for the final product.

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