Toyota Partners With Tesla To Make Electric Cars 327
An anonymous reader writes "Toyota just announced that it will invest $50 million in Tesla Motors and the two companies will partner to manufacture electric vehicles to meet California's growing demand for greener cars. Bay Area residents should be especially excited, as this venture is expected to create thousands of new jobs in the San Francisco Bay area, and is sure to be a boon to California's flagging economy. Tesla fans as well should rejoice as the new partnership will allow the EV startup to bring its highly coveted, iconic design to more affordable electric vehicles like the Model S sedan, which will sell for $49,900 and gets 300 miles on a 3- to 5-hour charge."
Damn, I wish they partnered with Aptera (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla, to me, seems to be the same old inefficient car bodies with a bunch of batteries squeezed into it. Batteries where the elements come from strip mining and other nasty things, so the environmental impact is just shifted and reduced a bit, but not a lot.
OTOH, Aptera, to me, represents a new way of thinking.
Nissan LEAF has Toyota running scared... (Score:5, Interesting)
(...and running, and running, and running, without stopping...)
Nissan LEAF has been announced at a price point that makes it cost-competitive with the Prius, which nobody expected. Toyota is now terrified because they bet the farm on hybrids, which have shitty mileage! Yes, I said it, their mileage is shit. You get the same effective mileage or better with a small TDI. In the really real world, 1.8 TDI Golfs get better mileage than any Prius. And that doesn't even get into the Lupo with 1.6 BlueTec diesel... which we can't have here because it won't pass federal crash test requirements.
Parallel hybrids are a really dumb idea and nobody has brought us a plug-in series hybrid yet. Enter: Nissan LEAF, to actually change the game. Nobody will take people like Aptera seriously without EVs gaining more market traction. Thanks, Ghosn.
Re:a journey of a thousand miles per gallon.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Answering the "is-a-new-tesla-greener-than-an-existing-hummer?" in the header: Yes...
Can anyone think of a vehicle that is NOT greener than an existing hummer?
Apparently even a 100 year old Model T has a better mpg rating [wanttoknow.info] and they seem to last forever.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Kudo's Tesla and other observations (Score:4, Interesting)
I like it! First, I've been around Tesla; involved as a third-party with drivetrain development. They are a GREAT group of engineer's with entreuprenurial spirit... Everyone I worked with took ownership with the goal of designing/engineering top quality. Those of you who are not in the automotive world don't have any concept of what goes into building a passenger vehicle nor the cost associated with development of new technologies for this market. Yes with a decent bank-roll I'm guessing that 80% of the /. readers could come up with a functional electric vehicle (batteries, VFD, a couple of seats, 4 tires and a steering wheel), but it is much more than this when you consider safety (MVSS), reliability / durability, comfort (A/C, radio with bluetooth and mp3).... building vehicles and being competitive in that market is challenging. Breaking into that market with a totally new brand, product line, and technology is the most daunting concept I've ever contemplated. $50M is chump change in terms of vehicle development. Consider that Toyota paid $16.4M as a fine for the recall debacle... 33% of what they are investing with Tesla... What I see as important in this is the alignment of the planets; Toyota's manufacturing facility in San Jose (Matrix / Pontiac Vibe) is currently idled; pushing the Tesla sub-$50k will require sales volume... manufacturing volume can not be accomplished without a proper manufacturing facility...
Re:I can't wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to sell the GM EV1 and EV2 in a past life as a car salesman (just recently my immortal soul finally came off lease from the Devil).
Those cars were awesome, some of the tech that went into them was mind blowing, yet all the leases were canceled and all the cars crushed. This, in spite of some owners offering up to $100,000 to keep them. At my work now we have two EVs, both homebrew. I have been thinking of building my own, based on a small truck chassis.
$50K for 300mi at a 4Hr nominal charge is something I would consider buying. My current design goal for a homebrew is 50mi unrestricted acceleration A/C or Heater and 100mi @ controlled acceleration topping at 55mph no AC or Heat.
-nB
Re:a journey of a thousand miles per gallon.... (Score:3, Interesting)
yes.
And TopGear looked into a Prius Vs. a BMW M3 and found:
for a given speed (highway) the M3 had better milage.
The M3 cost less (energy) to manufacture.
The M3 batteries were greener to manufacture.
The Prius NiMh batteries were:
* Mined in Canada at a dirty mine
* ore was shipped to China to be smelted
* raw metal was shipped to Europe to be "foamed"
* Foamed nickel plates were shipped to Japan to be built into batteries
* Batteries were shipped to the US for assembly into the Prius.
In other news: Recycling a plastic bottle is worse for the environment than burning it as fuel.
I don't know about the rest of /. but I do not expect people to care about that, nor do I expect them to believe me.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect that this tradeoff will be a lot more attractive in areas of the world where gasoline/petrol is $7 ($us) a gallon, but here where the price is about 1/3 to 1/2 of that, I'm guessing that the loss of freedom and spontanity is not worth meager price savings.
a lot of people say that "once the US catches up with the rest of the world in gas prices, the demand for hybrid, synthetic (e85), and electric vehicles will shoot up". This is true, the demand will shoot up... but not the means to afford them. gas prices in the US doubling would tank the economy very badly, as this country is built upon cheap gas. Shipping by truck, commuting from suburbs, vacationing by car (we have several states that depend on tourism income), etc.
I'm not saying this is long-term sustainable, but the US trying to ween itself off gasoline nearly cold turkey would have catastrophic economical consequences.
Plus, who the hell wants to walk out to the garage in the morning and say "oh crap, I forgot to plug in the car / the charging outlet it blew a fuse / a rat chewed up the cable" etc.
Electric cars will become popular when:
1. the price is sane compared to similar traditionally powered vehicles
2. the inconvience downsides have been minimized.
Re:I can't wait. (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to sell the GM EV1 and EV2 in a past life as a car salesman (just recently my immortal soul finally came off lease from the Devil).
With all due respect, you never sold a GM EV in your life. They were all leases, as you then go on to say in paragraph two.
$50K for 300mi at a 4Hr nominal charge is something I would consider buying.
Yeah, you and a lot of other people. It's not impossible that a reasonably affordable next-gen EV might hit 200mi. 300, I think, is still out of reach.
Re:Nissan LEAF has Toyota running scared... (Score:3, Interesting)
somewhere in that range.
Now, what TopGear didn't show is that in all stop and go driving the Prius would win, especially with jack rabbit starts.
Re:The thing that makes electrics un-economical (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nissan LEAF has Toyota running scared... (Score:2, Interesting)
You forgot to add the caveat:
The BMW M3 beats the Prius on mileage when the Prius is driven like a race car.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>If we want to move to 100% electric cars
I don't think pure electric cars have a future. People don't want to be limited to a 300 mile radius when they travel. When GREET performed a study several years ago, they found the most efficient car (least energy used) was actually an electric-diesel hybrid, where the electric was the primary motivator and the diesel engine provided a backup for the battery.
They ranked a pure diesel car as the second most efficient, as evidenced by the almost 90mpg Lupo in Germany (or the 250mpg prototype).
The Tesla, based off Scientific American's price per mile calculations, and using those prices as comparison, gets 120mpg equivalent (75 cents per gallon equivalent of miles driven instead of $3).
Additionally, Tesla has already designed their new models with 5 minute battery replacement in mind. Yes, the infrastructure doesnt yet exist, but the more of these cars that sell, the more likely such an infrastructure will come into existence.
On top of that, when it comes to road trips, most people stop in 5 or less hours (within the vehicle's range) for 45 minutes to an hour. A quickcharge station (ie:45 minute charge) is something very easy to install at most rest stops and Interstate located gas stations. Again, no infrastructure yet, but this one is a very easy infrastructure to install.
Additionally, for those who do go on road trips, the gas savings each year should (generally) easily cover the cost of a rental car and leave money left over.
So, for the vast majority of drivers who do not go on long road trips, this vehicle makes a lot of sense. Eventually, this means an increase in demand, and increase in infrastructures (battery replacement and/or quickcharge stations).
Additionally, there is no reason why, through sales of these vehicles (or other methods of justifying it) that Toyota and Tesla cannot come up with a 300 mile on electric range car that supplements battery charging with a small motor for "enhanced range" mode.
On top of all of that, there are new technologies (either now going into mass production, or soon to go into mass production) that provide either (a) cheaper batteries with longer life (the silicon based ones) or (b) batteries with greater storage capacities in the same size (various new lithium ion technologies that use other elements in their design, as well as promised breakthroughs in supercap technologies). As with all technology, I expect these improvements, especially with a growing (albeit slowly) market emerging that needs them, will help push the technology (electric cars) into something more people are interested in. There's always gotta be the first effort to get things to that point. Just like the original IBM PC. As much of a success as it was, it pales in comparison to the situation today, where "everyone" owns a computer - or two or three, and prices have dropped to make them a commodity item.
Most people didnt think that the automobile would take off either. Or numerous other technological advances.