maybe all is not lost with toyota after all

[strap-on]

Did anyone see on BBC world a couple of nights ago they had a Lotus with a tesla motor in it. That looked the business

Performance

* 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph): approximately 4.0 s
* Top speed: 210 km/h (130 mph)
* Range: 400 km (250 miles) on the EPA highway cycle
* carbon dioxide emission equivalent: 89 - 178 g/km
* Fuel efficiency: 200 watt-hours per mile - the electrical equivalent of about 135 miles per gallon [3]

More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster

Sounds real mean in theory the tourque "line" (ie imagine the peak of a tourque curve in your normal supercar, double it and make it a horizontal line) is to die for.

The problem is that while lithium ion batteries make this vehicle very viable ( as there is no memory effect in the batteries so they can be discharged and charged at random) they still like all batteries have a limited shelf life. This wouldnt be to bad except the tesla has 11000 of what are essentially laptop batteries. Now last time i looked laptop batteries wernt cheap. What the tesla saves in fuel costs the customer will pay in three- four years in battery replacement costs.

[SNIPER]

Besides, they should be concentrating less on asthetics, and more on making them run on something other than petrol..

As long as there is oil in the ground i dont think that will ever happen since oil companys are making too much money to really care, and if car companys stopped using oil then the oil companys would lose out so they do there best to slow the process down. Plus I know of a guy who had an idea to make a engine with magnets (he's not the first to think of this idea) but after talks with people who make magnets they stopped communications with him after they learnd what he wanted to use the magnets for. They simply said "we dont want to speak with you anymore" & would not respond to any letters or phone calls after that.

[strap-on]

They probably had someone else doing the same thing

[BlakJak]

Did anyone see on BBC world a couple of nights ago they had a Lotus with a tesla motor in it. That looked the business

Performance

* 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph): approximately 4.0 s
* Top speed: 210 km/h (130 mph)
* Range: 400 km (250 miles) on the EPA highway cycle
* carbon dioxide emission equivalent: 89 - 178 g/km
* Fuel efficiency: 200 watt-hours per mile - the electrical equivalent of about 135 miles per gallon [3]

More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster

Sounds real mean in theory the tourque "line" (ie imagine the peak of a tourque curve in your normal supercar, double it and make it a horizontal line) is to die for.

The problem is that while lithium ion batteries make this vehicle very viable ( as there is no memory effect in the batteries so they can be discharged and charged at random) they still like all batteries have a limited shelf life. This wouldnt be to bad except the tesla has 11000 of what are essentially laptop batteries. Now last time i looked laptop batteries wernt cheap. What the tesla saves in fuel costs the customer will pay in three- four years in battery replacement costs.

Got it in one. Not to mention the relatively scarce quantities of Lithium out there...

[strap-on]

Yes the demand for lith-ion batteries is only going up while supply is staying steady so the prices will stay the same if not get higher,

This is why fuel-celled cars will be the way to go, you still have the amazing performance of the electric car, without the battery replacement costs, and the added advantage of being able to full up in minutes as oppose to hours