One of the worries I have about Tesla Motors and the tremendous hype surrounding the upcoming Tesla Roadster – a legitimately tremendous vehicle – is that the realities of the company's offerings won't be as cool or as dramatic as the visions we've all read about and salivated over for the last five months. In that time, I have heard criticism about the EV start-up that says the guys in charge aren't totally committed to anything beyond the Roadster, even though Elon Musk and Martin Eberhard and others have been repeatedly saying - to AutoblogGreen and other news sources - since the beginning that they are.
This is a long-winded way to say I was a bit worried when I saw the headline to this story from Inside Bay Area: "Musk's next frontier: Space" (Musk is one of the main funders of Tesla Motors and helped design the Roadster but now spends a lot of time with Space X). I have not been a doubter that Tesla would really bring us the amazing $50,000 and $30,000 electric family cars in the next few years, but I did worry when I read that. Of course, I needn't have sweated even the slightest bit. I think the editor just wasn't paying much attention to the story beyond the first three paragraphs.
The article, by Matt Nauman, is really just a feature on Musk and Tesla Motors. There's not a lot that will be new to AutoblogGreen readers (although I had forgotten that the Roadster's code name was Dark Star and the family sedan is code named White Star), but I found it a good read (a lot better than this one, from the Pattaya Daily News, which was also written/updated in late December but has absolutely no new news). In the Inside Bay Area article, Musk confirms that the sales goal for the $30,000 electric sedan will be 100,000-plus units a year once it's released and disses Detroit's ability to build an electric car. "They [Detroit] know about eight-cylinder gasoline engines. They have no idea how to build a high-performance, AC-induction electric motor. Or how to build the very sophisticated drive electronics that are necessary to power that," he said.
The thing I take away from the Inside Bay Area article (and headline) is that I should just continue to trust that Tesla Motors will be delivering on their promises and realize that Musk is capable of bringing great electric cars to market while working on rockets. He's just that kind of guy, as he detailed in this blog post. Oh, and I need to let editors be editors.
[Source: Inside Bay Area]
This is a long-winded way to say I was a bit worried when I saw the headline to this story from Inside Bay Area: "Musk's next frontier: Space" (Musk is one of the main funders of Tesla Motors and helped design the Roadster but now spends a lot of time with Space X). I have not been a doubter that Tesla would really bring us the amazing $50,000 and $30,000 electric family cars in the next few years, but I did worry when I read that. Of course, I needn't have sweated even the slightest bit. I think the editor just wasn't paying much attention to the story beyond the first three paragraphs.
The article, by Matt Nauman, is really just a feature on Musk and Tesla Motors. There's not a lot that will be new to AutoblogGreen readers (although I had forgotten that the Roadster's code name was Dark Star and the family sedan is code named White Star), but I found it a good read (a lot better than this one, from the Pattaya Daily News, which was also written/updated in late December but has absolutely no new news). In the Inside Bay Area article, Musk confirms that the sales goal for the $30,000 electric sedan will be 100,000-plus units a year once it's released and disses Detroit's ability to build an electric car. "They [Detroit] know about eight-cylinder gasoline engines. They have no idea how to build a high-performance, AC-induction electric motor. Or how to build the very sophisticated drive electronics that are necessary to power that," he said.
The thing I take away from the Inside Bay Area article (and headline) is that I should just continue to trust that Tesla Motors will be delivering on their promises and realize that Musk is capable of bringing great electric cars to market while working on rockets. He's just that kind of guy, as he detailed in this blog post. Oh, and I need to let editors be editors.
[Source: Inside Bay Area]
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