99 out of 100 for Tesla

[Gripenfelter]

http://mashable.com/2013/05/09/tesla-model-s-2/

Consumer Reports has fallen in love with the Tesla Model S. On its scale of one to 100, the $70,000+ electric car scored a 99, tied with the highest rating the highly regarded publication has ever awarded to any car.

It's an enormous victory for Elon Musk's growing electric car company, which showed its first profit last quarter. The praise from Consumer Reports is in stark contrast to the controversial review from The New York Times three months ago, which showed the car running out of battery power and emphasized its limited range compared to vehicles powered by fossil fuels.

Consumer Reports lauded the car's "excellent handling," "comfortable ride," and "eerily hushed," roomy interior. The reviewers praised the car's 17-inch touchscreen with its high-resolution Google Earth maps, generous trunk space in the front and back, and powerful acceleration.

The review cited the car's need to recharge as its only flaw. Said the publication's head of auto testing Jake Fisher to CNN, "If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110."

Citing a range of "180 and 225 miles on a charge, depending on the weather," Consumer Reports wrote that the car recharges in 5 hours when plugged into Tesla's optional high-power wall connector, or 12 hours on a standard 240 V electric car charger. The publication paid $89,654 its test car, which included the most powerful battery and fastest charger, and an additional $1,200 for that optional high power wall connector.


SEE ALSO: Iron Man 3's Tony Stark and Tesla's Elon Musk: Separated at Birth?

As a result of the Consumer Reports praise of the electric car, Tesla stock rose by 13% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, continuing that trend Thursday morning as it skyrocketed by an additional 25%, up 107.3% for the year.

Writes Consumer Reports, which buys all its review vehicles and accepts no paid advertising: "So is the Tesla Model S the best car ever? We wrestled with that question long and hard. It comes close." What do you think?

[supe]

I'm following Tesla and everything Elon is doing quite closely. Despite any arguments about EV's vs old school combustion engines, Elon is out to change the world.

Beyond the battle between electric vs gasoline, its also a neat seeing a silicon valley startup go up against a huge automotive industry. If you watch the video from consumer reports, it goes to show that Tesla is not following in traditional way of how cars are made and how they should work. Instead of improving on how something already works they are reinventing the whole experience.

Go Tesla, if only I had 100k to drop.

[CanmoreOrLess]

Tesla teams up with Google, NA car makers are SOL. I could see this happening, they are already in talks over self driven cars. Tesla is such a great company at the moment.

[Xtrema]

Right direction but battery tech need to improve.

The super charging station Tesla built is better but 30min for 90% charge is still way too long.

[supe]

Originally posted by Xtrema
Right direction but battery tech need to improve.

The super charging station Tesla built is better but 30min for 90% charge is still way too long.

One interesting thing to note is you're right that it needs to improve but the fact is it will improve. R&D will push all aspects of EV technology forward.

Second, although the 30 mins would kind of suck, as a daily driver you would never need recharge it at a station because you're charging overnight. The kicker is also that the 30 mins gives you a full recharge completely free. Lets use a round number of 300km per charge, how much are you paying for the equivalent for tank of gas, is it worth 30 mins of your time?

[A790]

Thinking back on how I use my vehicles, I can see how ONCE or TWICE per year I'd be inconvenienced by the range. Most of the time I'd never even notice it.

God I'd love to have one for a DD.

[ExtraSlow]

Battery technology is the achillies heel for a lot of technology. Smartphones are starting to use lower capability processors on purpose just to increase battery life.

There is a lot of R&D going into batteries, and when we get the next big leap in that tech, it's going to transform a lot of the things we are used to using every day.

[Gripenfelter]

I think a better alternative would be to have replaceable batteries.

You pull into a charging station and pull out your stack of batteries and slide in a fully charged set. Would have to come up with something like having the batteries all in a row on a roller mechanism to slide out of the back by pushing a release switch and pulling them all out. Then put the fresh batch on the slider and push them in.

If it takes 5 mins or less you have a billion dollar idea.

[Vagabond142]

Originally posted by Xtrema
Right direction but battery tech need to improve.

The super charging station Tesla built is better but 30min for 90% charge is still way too long.

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

[01RedDX]

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[1barA4]

Originally posted by Gripenfelter
I think a better alternative would be to have replaceable batteries.

You pull into a charging station and pull out your stack of batteries and slide in a fully charged set. Would have to come up with something like having the batteries all in a row on a roller mechanism to slide out of the back by pushing a release switch and pulling them all out. Then put the fresh batch on the slider and push them in.

If it takes 5 mins or less you have a billion dollar idea.

This was mentioned in Road & Track a few months ago in response to a reader's near-identical suggestion -- there is a company trying to get traction for this but the opposition is not from carmakers, it's from the service stations/gas stations.

Something about investment cost is too high for them at this early-adopters stage.

Going back to the range -- 180 miles at minimum in fair weather....minus 20% for winter (noting that is not a percentage based in fact) still over 140 mile range. More than enough for work, grocery shopping after work and then out for dinner and a movie on the same charge, in the middle of a -20 blizzard.

Now if they can get the price down to 30k CAD, then the masses (i.e. me) would buy. Anything over 40k CAD and it's just an upper-middle class boondoggle. At 90+K USD, it's just a fashion accessory.

[max_boost]

$90K for the car!

[Sugarphreak]

....

[sputnik]

The price is still the main problem.

You could buy a decent car for $40-50k and still have a ton of money left over to fill the tank.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[schocker]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
I thought part of the consumer reports criteria is to evaluate the value of the price against what you get. How the fuck do they give 99 out of 100 points to a car that no normal person can afford?

It is consumer reports, you have to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

[Redlyne_mr2]

If consumer report loves it I will not.

[01RedDX]

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[black13]

Originally posted by Vagabond142


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

Yup, this is gonna change everything, not just electric cars. Gonna take a while though.

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
I thought back in the early concept days, Tesla was supposed to be releasing this car for closer to 50K so the average person could get one.

They explain their model well in other articles. The plan is they start out with an expensive model like this one, and use that money on further R&D and start building cheaper and cheaper models. One step at a time as obviously the car business is super tough to break into.

You can't just magically start out with a cheaper EV out of no where and expect to have enough profits left over for more products. Profit margins are too slim for low end models right now.

[E36M3]

Pretty inexpensive for a car that compares favorably to a BMW M5 in almost every way. Given its performance and luxury, it seems underpriced to me.. which is probably one of the reasons it has such a massive waiting list.

Their SUV and follow up cars will continue to move down the ladder price wise and you'll start to see them everywhere.

Originally posted by max_boost
$90K for the car!