Canon PowerShot SD700 IS
ƒ/2.8
5.8 mm
1/15
Happy Fourth of July from Validation Prototype 9 at Tesla HQ (night view)
18 responses to “Full of Sparks”
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The blue light with the fuel Gasoline ‘s Pump, makes me think of Sentinels in Matrix .Looking, exploring this strange "4 wheel’ s ship : )
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Not entirely sure that the inherently inefficient process of burning fossil fuels to boil water to rotate steam turbines to pass conductors through a magnetic field to generate electricity to store in lithium batteries to power a 2-seater sports car is truly making anyone independent of oil – but it’s a sweet car. And technically brilliant. Alarmingly reminiscent of the 2nd generation Elise I used to own, from which bits used to drop regularly – but a sweet car nonetheless.
Now, despite my big dose of cynicism (blame it on 12 hours of pampered rock stars pretending to care during Live Earth), this would make an amazing Summer car in Austria – lots of unpolluting hydroelectric power and awesome, twisty mountain roads to justify its performance and handling.
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good points. The folks I know who have these cars on order (including the small Google fleet) are going to use solar panels to charge them, bringing the marginal cost to zero. And for others, they will charge during off-peak hours and benefit from grid upgrades over time (i.e., there is a certain flexibility afforded by having vehicles running off electricity. As society migrates to modern grid technologies, from solar to nuclear, the fleet of vehicles goes along for the ride).
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… oh that the solar panel trick would work here in the UK. I do like the idea of a ‘small Google fleet’ of these – makes the Segways whipping in and out of the reception at Infinite Loop seem so last century! Strange thought – it will make for an uncannily quiet track day when they get used in earnest.
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well with all the sun here in asia, solar panels are sure handy-
me and a friend have been trying to tech-economically work out a solar panel,battery operated paramotor -also wud be fun to take it over to see egypt! 🙂 -
Tesla’s web site has lots of numbers that they claim show these cars to be much more efficient than the standard gas burning type. They measure efficiency in what they call "well to wheel" which just means they consider all energy costs, including those transporting and storing the energy.
I’m still skeptical of their numbers, but I give them credit for not glossing over the inefficiencies of the electrical energy production and transportation system.
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Burning petroleum a generator like those found at power plants yields more energy than an internal combustion engine. For me, though, the inherent efficiency of the drivetrain itself (e.g. no motor running and wasting fuel at red lights) is the best part of the deal.
Solar panels won’t do much good in Norway during winter, but at least we get a good portion of our electricity from hydroelectric power plants. I do suspect, though, that the moment I bring a Tesla into this country the government will invent some new tariff for it, just because it looks so great (EVs are exempt from the normal car tariffs here, in an effort to speed adoption)
I’m oh so very glad that we’ve managed to disconnect environmental concern from the tired old ascetic/forced simplicity/anti-tech stance. The Tesla’s the best proof so far of a new direction for all things green.
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Hi, I’m an admin for a group called All Things Carbon Fiber, and we’d love to have this added to the group!
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I took advantage of Creative Commons and used this photo to illustrate a blog post on California tail pipe emissions at Super Eco. Thank you!
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