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Tesla Motors - A tale of no tail

Got to recently experience this newest incarnation of automotive variant. Fully electric and therefore quiet with no tail pipe it is produced in a factory that ironically was used by former General Motors to crank out some mediocre sedans that did have tail pipes. The factory is in Northern California suburb and does everything an average car company does not do today. It gets labor from a non unionized workforce and is the brain child of an inventor who made millions in the e-commerce business. The car hopes to provide no hassle pricing and some government subsidies for being green. I am not sold on the green narrative since the gas if not emmitted by the car has to emit somewhere (perhaps a coal fired electric utility thousand miles away). The migration to solar panels in the desert and other renewables for sustainable and reliable electric power across the country is still a mirage. The car also will liekly be marketed and sold by the company's own showrooms much like Apple sells computers. In fact this car in some ways is a slick computer on wheels (more and more cars now burn a lot more power running microprocessors) but given its all electric it lends to its aura. The finish and interiors are that of a German inspired sedan and ride quality is crisp. Speed is relative and frankly I still do not see any rationale for the speedometers to have markings for 200 MPH and to provide horses under the hood that never get to graze let alone run wild. I mean where are you going? To work - to the wine country on the weekend? Have you seen the road infrastructure? Its been shovel ready since before the Tesla operation started. If you are perhaps a Kansas farmer and somehow end up in a Tesla electric you might be lucky to head out in to the sunset on a stretch of highway with merely a whine from the motor but have you seen traffic on 101? There are a lot of real disconnects between what the product offers and the value proposition but nonetheless it is a surprise and a nice package for the visual cortex to admire. One thing I am not sure - why Tesla? Tesla touted AC but I suspect most of the internals run on DC for motors and such. I suppose the source of fuel is AC since you plug the thing at home in a wall charger before you head out to work the next morning.
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  1. RajendraApril 21, 2013 at 10:10 PM

    Since you can't call it Ooh, la, la, may be it's Tes-la!

    ReplyDelete

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