Dan Neil reviews the Tesla Roadster: "dumbfounding acceleration"

[wtmusic]

"I'm bombing around Hollywood on a Saturday night in an all-electric Tesla Roadster, a sick-with-torque, carbon-fiber mosquito with a half-ton of glorified camera batteries behind the seats. It's a perfect night for cruising, cool and moonlit. The city lights drizzle over the silver car like Campari and creme de menthe.

As I nick down Vine, a Porsche Carrera C4 takes up a flanking position to my left and raps his engine -- a thick, ornery staccato rises, a murder of gas-powered crows. I, of course, have no engine to rap. The electric buzz the Tesla produces at low speed sounds like a toaster with a bagel lodged in it. I shrug sheepishly in the direction of the Porsche driver, sequestered behind tinted glass.

I turn west on Sunset and he follows me. He puts the Porsche door-to-door with the Tesla and guns the flat-six again. Oh, I get it. He wants to race to the next light. That's too bad for him." :D

http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-fi-neil6-2009feb06,0,5261426.story

[rurallib]

1. cool!

"half-ton of glorified camera batteries" - this will change.

[kristopher]

2. LOL

"My little mental circuits go snap-pop with the thrust. God has grabbed me by the jockstrap and fired me off his thumb, rubber band-style. Wow."

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Click and Clack..The guys who do Car Talk, did a test run on this car during a TV show they did

for NOVA on PBS called Cars of the Future.
They checked into various alternatively fueled cars.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/click-and-clack-take-manhattan/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/about.html
Also appearing are Andy Frank of the University of California at Davis, whose lab has developed a plug-in hybrid vehicle that "fills up" from an ordinary electrical outlet, and Martin Eberhard, founder of Tesla Motors, who wants to prove that battery-powered cars can be fast, stylish, and take you 250 miles on one charge.

They also did some seminars at MIT.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/clickandclack-0919.htmls


BTW..That is one cooool car!!!!!

[calimary]

4. There's a Tesla dealership that just opened up recently - less than 5 miles from me.

I pass it fairly frequently. Hardly even have the nerve to look in the window!

It's wicked cool, alright.

[IDemo]

5. They had an opening for a battery test technician a while ago

I was seriously considering sending a resumé. They have since laid off a number of employees, so it
may have been a good decision to stay put. I would definitely love to work in that environment, though.