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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Time to trade in the Prius?
0-60 in 4 seconds, top speed around 130 mph, and 250 miles on a charge (which takes about 3 hours and can come from a regular home electrical outlet.) Of course it would take two trips to get my twins to school and I don't really have $100,000 in my car budget, but I like the fact that someone is finally making an electric car that aims to be a regular vehicle (to the extent that high performance sports cars are "regular") and not having a gas engine is just a bonus. I like my Prius but its main attraction is simply that it is a hybrid with great milage. The secret to getting past the internal combustion engine is making cars that people want to drive in their own right. This seems like a very promising first step. The Tesla home page is here.
4 Comments:
You can't plug the Prius in, right? That's really the next step -- a car like the Prius that lets you run on electric power almost all the time.
That's right, you can't plug it in. There are kits available that let you modify it so that you can and I guess that can get you up to about 80 mpg on short trips around town. It also voids your warrantee. Toyota says they didn't include the plug in option becasue they thought it would turn away buyers who didn'tknow it also had a gas engine and were unwilling to have an electric car for fear they would get stranded somewhere.
Granted the Tesla is a nitch car, but it might break down some of the resistance to plug ins and make it more likely that toyota and others make plug in hybrids and eventually all electric cars.
You want energy efficiency? Dump the Prius and get a Scion xB. Or even a Hummer H3. According to that study, the hybrids only get half of "think globally, act locally" right.
And does Toyota really think buyers are that dumb? Why not just put the plug right next to the gas cap, with big, bright labels for both?
By 
Joey de Vivre, at
4:24 PM
I think I've found my mid-life crisis car.
There's a review here: http://www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/2006_los_angeles/0611_tesla_roadster/index.html
By 
, at
12:16 PM
