Sunday, July 23, 2006

Creating the ultimate electric car

There was a lot of coverage this week on the Tesla Roadster. Articles like this one are typical:

Electric car a shocker in speed (and sticker price)

This car is funded with $60 million raised from Silicon Valley bigwigs like Larry Page and Sergey Brin along with executives from eBay and PayPal.

The car is both impressive and useless: Impressive because it goes from zero to 60 in 4 seconds and has a 200 mile range; Useless because it costs $100K.

Wouldn't it be interesting if, instead of a $100K sports car, what we were developing were a real, useful electric car that would solve a big problem for America? Some of the features of this car would be:That third feature is essential, because it would allow the same sort of rapid advancement and commodity pricing that we see in the PC marketplace. Imagine being able to buy the car's body from one place, the motor from another, the batteries and controller from a third, and then bolt them all together to create a car that works. Hundreds of manufacturers could participate in an open marketplace and the price of cars would fall dramatically. We would also see rapid advancement. If someone developed a fuel cell to replace the battery pack, then people could switch over to it easily without having to buy a new car.

As an unexpected side-benefit, Dell could start selling cars. Maybe that would help its stock price.

This would be a great way to invest $60 million. Why didn't they go this route?

Comments:
haha
 
www.myspace.com
 
Check out the Tango, from Commuter Cars. It's been in development for some years, with less funding but more transparency in the process than Tesla had. As with Tesla, their first offering is a high-performance "rich man's toy;" they've already sold one, to George Clooney. But they're also working on more reasonably priced consumer versions (to the tune of $20K).
 
Frankly I think you are incorrect on this Marshall. As I read somewhere, *all* new products start out as expensive, boutique items - computers, DVD players, cellphones, cars (100 years ago) etc. Then if the product appeals to early-adopters, it is much easier to move into the mainstream.
 
Just to follow-up on John's comment, this is the GM car discussed in that movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1

Just saw the movie yesterday. Interesting stuff.
 
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