Just been for a ride in a Tesla electric sports car, massively impressive. Will put some pics and details up once I ghet home.
Adam

does it have the usuall electric car torque curve? MASSES of pull off the line which reduces exponentially afterwards?

[Edited on 18/5/07 by ADD]

OK for some reason I can't get my pics to upload but they are in my archive if you want to have a look.
it has 240hp 100% tourqe all the time, the one I was in was a prototype about to go for endurance testing. The final one will have 2 'gears' basically a low range and a not so low range. The one I was in only had second gear, 0-60 in about 6 secs rather than the production 4 secs. It pulled at a constant rate, obviously no gear changes to inturupt the fun and constant straight line torque.
The only thing that was missing was a decent sound track. It sounded like a dynamo - like you used to get on bicycles.

Adam

[Edited on 18/5/07 by ADD]

[Edited on 18/5/07 by ADD]

Nice looking car and I imagine great fun until you have to replace the batteries

Also - from what I've seen the car is very expensive and only realy affordable by the rich and famous who will stop playing with it fairly soon and it will then become a display piece for their lip service to conservation.

One thing I've wandered about is the motor - what motor do they use - from my experience of pump motors a 100kW + motor weighs a ton and is way too heavy for a car never mind say 4 X 30 kW motors.

The batteries are good for about 100 000 miles, and yes they are expensive. The car is about £50K so yes expensive but for the first of its kind I don't think its that bad.
400 people have paid for one without even having sat in one!.

They use a newly engineered motor - not your common garden lecky motor - about the size of a 24 pack of bottled beer. the battery pack is much bigger. Batts and motor weigh in at a hefty 1/2 ton. But the rest of the car is carbon fibre.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ivan
One thing I've wandered about is the motor - what motor do they use - from my experience of pump motors a 100kW + motor weighs a ton and is way too heavy for a car never mind say 4 X 30 kW motors.

---

Nice looking motor, but it needs a v8 petrol engine dropping in, sod the dolphins
Al.

motor's probably a permanent magnet synchronous or maybe brushless DC - they have best efficiency & are nice & quiet.
I'll just google it to see how far off the mark I am....
Bob

Tesla Motors

A 4 pole 3 phase motor, so unsurprisingly a synchronous design. This technology has been used in many of the electric locomotives around London for a long time.