Move Over, Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari!

(CBS)  If you were told a sleek sports car is hitting the road that can go from zero-to-sixty mph in 3.9 seconds, that might catch your attention.

If you were told it's totally electric, you might be shocked.

Not only does the brand new Roadster from Tesla Motors look good, it's totally green.

It has a watermelon-sized electric motor -- not a engine -- and that motor produces no emissions as it kicks out 250 horsepower. It's also totally silent.

Tesla veep Darryl Siry showed off a Roadster on The Early Show plaza Thursday.

With a price tag of about $100,000 and only 600 being made for 2008 model year, don't expect to see many of them on the road, but every one from this year has already been bought in advance.

The car can travel 220 miles on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack. You have to plug it in for three-and-a-half hours to get a full charge.

The Roadster gets the equivalent of 135 mpg.

Tesla plans to make 1,800 Roadsters for the 2009 model year, of which 500 have already been reserved.

To see the Roadster on our plaza and going through its paces, click on the arrow in the image below.


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[funkotronic]

To quote: "not a engine" Did this writer graduate 3rd grade? ***?

On topic: Until a greener method of GENERATING the power these cars will run on is commonplace and economically feasible, the EVs will just be an oddity, rather than a viable transportation method. Solar is the most obvious choice, but solar conversion with today''s (unsupressed) tech only converts a small fraction of the available energy.

Here%u2019s an idea: Put the solar cells in orbit (and create plenty of high-tech jobs in the process), harvest 95% of the available power (no atmospheric filtration), beam it down to Earth as microwaves (there are many 1000%u2019s of square miles of unusable land just in the US southwest that would make dandy microwave antenna farms), convert it to electricity at these farms and then inject it into the existing power grid. Not only do you get limitless power, but it''s 100% non-polluting, other than the residual heat from the devices consuming the power. So now you have all the power you could possible need and you could "fuel" your EV for literally pennies, even considering the subsidies required to bootstrap the entire conversion process.

Oh, wait - this will never work cuz the oil companies (or the totally honest, completely uncorrupt government) won''t make any money off of it. I have to go now - the assassins are at the door to kill me for being an independent thinker.

Not an original idea - proposed IN DETAIL by Jerry Pournelle in his "High Frontiers" series of essays.

[jaykay3141]

Amazing. A small private company builds a good-looking pocket rocket that runs for 220 miles on one 3.5 hour charge and sells it now. GM produces an ugly lump called the Volt that might be able to go 40 miles after sucking juice all night, IF they can get the kinks worked out by 2010 or 2011.

No wonder GM is a dinosaur.

[zykracosmos]

...and you worry what a cellphone does to brain tissue,
Try sitting on a huge electric motor for hours....


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Posted by Inventagod2 at 08:29 PM : Jul 03, 2008
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A most interesting question!

[j_flood]

Is there anyone doing risk analysis on the planetary effects related to electrifying automobiles, ala dead batteries, acids, lithium residue, and all the bits involved in electric cars? I''m not pro-anything - just when we went gasoline crazy about a century ago we didn''t see the polar caps melting either.

[ndg1979]

Many of you are mistaken. We ALREADY produced a 100% electric cell vehicle that could have been in mass-production. And the company that was going to bring it to you - General Motors. The car was called the EV-1 (electric vehicle-model 1 for those of you playing at home). The reason you don''t see it - a combination of entities associated with the industry of the internal combustion engine fought it, and eventually persuaded GM to fight against it''s own creation!! There eventual excuse? - it wasn''t time for the electric car.

Only 400 were made and lease-tested in California. Only 1 is known to have survived (in a museum disabled to a point it will never run I understand). And the electric car is nothing new. During the very early 20th century, the electric car was in combat against the internal combustion engine. For some reason, electric lost, but the idea has existed for some 100 years.

This is not new - just way past due.
For more info: http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com

[nocatnowaco]

Excellent green car i have ever seen. It is a better one if it comes with a retractable cord.

[nocatnowaco]

Good innovation. Get the price down and people will buy it; this car can be in mass production.

[inventagod2]

...and you worry what a cellphone does to brain tissue,
Try sitting on a huge electric motor for hours....

[susanhelit]

Nice! Electricity is far more environmentally friendly. Instead of millions of car tailpipes, all we have to manage is the fewer powerplants, control their emissions. A powerplant is already far less polluting than a car engine, and far more efficient. And I''ve driven an electric car before - it''s incredible feeling the acceleration when you don''t have those clunky gears going on. You push the pedal, and it just GOES!

[seafang]

Scuse me if I''m not impressed.
Tom Swift had Electric cars 60 years ago; so what''s taking Tesla so long to get going; can''t find enough duffers to cough up the dough to fund this boondoggle.

No nasty chemicals eh?

Try to convince me that those batteries just turn into water, when they are exhausted. Oh I forgot; water is a greenhouse gas which the Suprememcourt says is a pollutant that the EPA has to regulate.

Wait till they say your batteries are a pollutant that the EPA has to regulate (and reduce to 25% below 1990 levels.)