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402 Comments
- edd8nj, on 06/30/2009, -18/+285This Is the company we should be lending money to...-.-
- KittySpark1es, on 06/30/2009, -13/+156As much as I'm sick of the government handing out money to auto companies, I'm glad their giving it to Tesla instead of GM or Chrysler.
- zerton, on 06/30/2009, -4/+120Good. But I want a $20,000 electric car. They should work on that.
- inactive, on 06/30/2009, -20/+131About ***** time.
- NinjaoftheNorth, on 06/30/2009, -0/+68They are, in fact, working on a car to sell for between $20-$30K. However, they need capital to design it, build the factories that will make the car, as well as a network of dealers to service them. From what I understand, their plan has been to make the Tesla Roadster (about $100K), use money from that to make the Model S, and use the money from that to make the mass consumer version.
- seetheforest, on 06/30/2009, -6/+71Ford got $5.9 billion of the $8 billion package. Tesla got chump change. http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090623/CARNEWS/9 ...
- COLDshiver, on 06/30/2009, -1/+62Give them time, the company was founded in 2003 and are already on their second car.
- steelersfan7roe, on 06/30/2009, -7/+61To all the people complaining that they cannot afford a $50k Electric sedan. Great. It's not for you. But people buying those $50k electric cars will create revenue for the companies that profit off electric cars, which will encourage competition for the electric market.
Result? Better deals for the consumer to try and win your purchase, resulting in cheaper electric cars down the road. - COLDshiver, on 06/30/2009, -1/+54I know it may be chump change in comparison but keep in mind how big Ford is and how big Tesla is. I do wish that Tesla got more money though.
- chronopublish, on 06/30/2009, -0/+45Tesla received all the money that they requested from the program.
- borez, on 06/30/2009, -22/+64Money going to the right place, now there's a new concept. Wish the UK would follow suit.
- sigmaman2, on 06/30/2009, -17/+56BREAKING FOX NEWS:
Obama gives almost Half a Billion of YOUR taxpayer dollars to a southern California company that supposedly builds cars that run on electricity. Are they good for the environment? Or is this just another liberal, auto company, political payback bailout? We'll have more on The Factor tonight! - BMPOvojvoda, on 06/30/2009, -4/+43Nikola Tesla was a badass Serbian scientist!
- rmxz, on 06/30/2009, -2/+37And if we loan Tesla enough, they can buy all the manufacturing plants and talent they need from the remains of GM, Chrysler, etc (unless we keep bailing those guys out too). Seems a better way to keep the jobs in the US instead of giving cash to companies that already proved they can't innovate.
- TrancePhreak, on 06/30/2009, -7/+35Just hope they don't squander it and actually get their act together.
- zachstanley, on 06/30/2009, -3/+29You've gotta start somewhere, and all new technology is expensive until manufacturing processes catch up.
- cmcagle, on 06/30/2009, -8/+30According to Tesla's own estimates (which means they are certain to be inflated), the Electrical Storage System (battery) will last 100,000 miles or 7 years. After this, car owners will have to fork out $36,000 for a new battery.
By way of comparison, if you bought a brand new internal combustion vehicle with the current CAFE minimum 27.5 mpg, you'd burn about 3,636 gallons of gas to drive 100,000 miles. Assuming gas prices average an extremely high $5/gal over that 100,000-mile period, you'd have spent $18,180 on gas, just over half the price of a replacement battery for the Tesla. Assuming that other maintenance and upkeep are roughly the same for an internal combustion and an electric engine, that means gas would have to cost over $10/gal before it made economic sense to buy a Tesla. This ignores the higher cost of electricity from charging the Tesla, as well as the 3.5 hours it takes to charge the battery every 300 miles (under ideal conditions).
The bottom line is that electric is probably not the wave of the future. Pure electric cars are always going to be distance-limited, so you can forget about driving them cross-country, or even across a couple of states in any kind of reasonable time. (Can you imagine having to stop for 3.5 hours halfway through a 600-mile trip to charge your car?) Plus, with the diminishing returns on recharging batteries, electric cars are going to carry a very high Total Cost of Ownership over the long term, and you can pretty well forget about a used car market for electric vehicles. - AmusedToDeath, on 06/30/2009, -1/+21No, but you used a d d d d double negative.
- acknotSW, on 06/30/2009, -1/+21There are a lot of other things to take into consideration when considering the life of the batteries.
1. Electric motors can run many many times longer than internal combustion engines. Some estimates put the range easily near a million miles with minimal maintenance costs when compared to ICE's. This will allow a vehicle with bad batteries to still maintain a decent resale value.
2. You can travel 300 miles on less than $10 worth of electricity compared to $40 to $50 or more for most gasoline vehicles.
3. Many of the materials in batteries can be recycled and reused. I read somewhere about a battery where something like 85% of the battery can be reused and reconstituted.
4. As electric vehicles become more common, standards will be adopted and introduced, the costs of replacing the battery packs will drop dramatically.
The bottom line is, Early adopters will ways pay more than those who follow, but the benefits that we can gain by moving to electric vehicles will pay off huge in the long run. - ravage86, on 06/30/2009, -4/+23We shouldn't be lending money to anyone, banks should be after a thorough review of a business plan and credit worthiness. The government needs to stop meddling in everything.
- dmbchris, on 06/30/2009, -1/+19They should just retrofit one of the dozens of factories GM is throwing away this month.
- NiftyG, on 06/30/2009, -1/+19Tesla has an electric car that will cost $57K, which is promised to ship in 2011. As a company, they've manufactured less than 1000 vehicles over the past few years.
Ford has an electric version of the Focus that will cost about $20K less than new Tesla and will ship about the same time. They've also produced millions of cars over the past 100 years, including some very nice hybrids.
Not detracting from Tesla at all, but I think the dollar amounts are about right. The Tesla looks cool, but it's expensive and the company is still untested in terms of high volume production. Ford seems to be more able to manufacture more electric cars for an affordable price, which will get this technology into the mainstream more quickly. - roddack, on 06/30/2009, -14/+31And they justify this under the constitution how?
- zerton, on 06/30/2009, -0/+17I have faith then... I'll give them some time.
- chronopublish, on 06/30/2009, -6/+23Tesla did a number of things to their battery packs to greatly increase overall life, including not letting them charge past 90% (in standard charge mode) and regulating the temperature. They last much, much longer than 3 years as a result.
- samoan27, on 06/30/2009, -2/+19I always found it ironic that a company named Tesla uses direct current in their products.
- amzran, on 06/30/2009, -1/+17The Chevy Volt is $40,000 and is made by the largest car manufacturer the world has ever seen. I think it speaks volumes for Tesla to make a production car that's $50,000.
And this car isnt for the average consumer yet (whereas Chevy's trying to convince people that the Volt is). - chronopublish, on 06/30/2009, -2/+17Tesla has put tons of miles on their VP vehicles since they started building them in 2007, so they have a lot of real world data to work with.
Laptop batteries have terrible lifespans after 2-3 years primarily due to heat. As I mentioned in my previous post, temperature is closely regulated in Tesla's battery packs to greatly improve lifetime performance. In addition, Lithium Ion batteries do not like to be topped off or fully deplated, so by default the Tesla will refuse to charge past 90% capacity or discharge below 10% capacity. (There is a Range Mode that allows the user to temporarily override these limits.)
Tesla predicts that after 7 years or 100,000 miles (whichever comes first), the vehicle's range will be 70% of what it was when the car was first purchased. I find that to be well within acceptable. - hasslinthehoff, on 06/30/2009, -4/+19If this money can help Tesla develop better batteries, then I'm all for it...
- pegothejerk, on 06/30/2009, -4/+18"resulting in cheaper electric cars down the road."
Roads? Where they're going, they won't need roads. - schroeder, on 06/30/2009, -0/+13They have to spend a lot on R&D so they started making high end cars and work their way down so they could have the capital and technologies needed to make a lower priced car. At least that's what they implied in the video. http://www.oncars.com/video/496/2011-Tesla-Model-S ... (1:25)
- chronopublish, on 07/01/2009, -1/+14$36,000 for a new battery in 2016 is extremely unlikely. Nobody knows exactly what Tesla will charge for replacement batteries because they have not yet needed to sell one. However, customers are allowed to purchase a battery replacement plan for $12,000 which gets them a new battery 7 years after purchase.
It is very likely that by the time you'd need to replace your battery, the replacement will be significantly cheaper than when you first bought the car, and there will probably be a higher-capacity alternative that may give you much better range and/or performance. - jiggawatt, on 06/30/2009, -0/+13"resulting in cheaper electric cars down the road."
It all must begin somewhere. This kind of mentality has existed at the dawn of radio, TV, transistor radios, LCD/Plasma, Video game consoles, and cars, and on and on...
Thank you for being cognizant at the initial price of progress. - dmbchris, on 06/30/2009, -1/+14A car battery pack is run in much more ideal conditions than your laptop. More complex charge circuitry, wear-leveling, temperature sensors, cooling system, etc. The Volt only uses 50% of full capacity in order to increase the battery life.
That said, you are probably still looking at some serious loss of charge at 10 years, probably earlier. - brad3378, on 07/01/2009, -3/+15This isn't "GIVING"
this is a loan. - paradigmxx, on 07/01/2009, -3/+15Companies that show big promise get loans.
Companies that struggle get bailouts. - Shwaavay, on 06/30/2009, -0/+11Uh.. it's a 40-mile all electric range. After which the generator kicks in.
- Tableboy, on 06/30/2009, -6/+17These comments blow my mind... Do you people really not know the difference in a bailout and a loan?
- COLDshiver, on 06/30/2009, -1/+12First off, Tesla Motors is not in need of a bailout. The extra funds will be able to speed up their r&d and expand as a company
- jiggawatt, on 06/30/2009, -5/+16Oh GM and Chrysler are getting/have gotten a bunch of money. This is a drop in the bucket compared to what we've spent just to have GM file bankruptcy a few months later. I'd sure like to know what all of those BILLIONS went to.
And if anyone's going to pay back a LOAN from the govt, I'd expect these to be the guys to do it. - WasabiBomb, on 06/30/2009, -7/+18To be fair, they never actually stopped whining.
- SpykerSpeed, on 07/01/2009, -3/+14They don't. They stopped giving a ***** about it a while ago.
- Anaujiram89, on 06/30/2009, -15/+26Tesla is a great company with A LOT of potential. But it has one problem that doesn't get much notice...BATTERIES. Ok so the batteries in the Tesla S are good (300 mile range in ideal conditions), but batteries are a chemical mechanism not mechanical. All batteries wear out over time, just look at any year-old laptop. The company has to be conscious of this problem because people don't want a car that will have a 100mile range after 3 years and i doubt buyers will spend the extra couple of grand to replace it...do i hear warranty? i hope so
- ejde, on 06/30/2009, -0/+10Hey, Bill O'Reilly just called, Sigmaman... You're hired!
- Kewjoe, on 06/30/2009, -2/+12The article is a bit confused. Tesla will be selling its powertrain (ie: core mechnical parts of the car) from the Model S to other automakers such as MB. They are not selling electric power trains.
- mikejones1983, on 06/30/2009, -26/+36Dear federal government, please stop forcefully redistributing money from American taxpayers to businesses.
- chronopublish, on 07/01/2009, -0/+9Not so ironic, the electricity you use to charge the car is delivered via AC.
Not to mention it uses the motor that Tesla invented. - JCEEZ, on 06/30/2009, -1/+10Lets hope they don't hire TOO much of GM and Chryslers "talent"
- TsuruchiBrian, on 06/30/2009, -2/+11@JCEEZ
It IS an investment.
And for that reason investment companies and the stock market should be doing the investing. That way it is shareholders that lose their money rather than taxpayers.
I didn't sign up to invest in Tesla. I shouldn't be forced to pay when they can't pay back their loans.
The Federal government has almost no incentive to make good investments. It is not their money that they are gambling with. The politicians in Washington aren't the ones that will be working at Disneyland collecting tickets when they are 75 years old, because they can't retire. - mgraham80, on 06/30/2009, -9/+18Dear mikejones1983, please familiarize yourself with the meaning of the words "loan," "interest," and "repayment."
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