Cheers,

-cvj

On the “England, a country that more or less lost its ability to make cars for the general consumer a while back.” you may not be aware that we make a lot of cars still. We can still make good cars and more efficiently than the Japanese and others.

Unfortunately we make them for the same Japanese and others. We have plenty of production facilities for cars, we just don’t own them:-(

That applies to the Lotus factory as well which is owned by Proton. Thankfully they let the weird types at Lotus follow their instincts which results in some excellent products including this one.

What i want is an efficient car. At the moment, i’m driving a sedan that is getting 43 MPG. It’s “just” a 1.9 liter 4 cylinder engine with a 5 speed manual. It was cheap. I bought it on the used market. The Kelly Blue book value was $1500 for this 5 year old 150,000 mile car. I’ve put 25,000 miles on it in the past year. When it dies, i’ll look for another great deal.

What do i want in a car? Efficiency. A/C. Cruise Control. AM/FM radio with Aux in for my mp3 player. White, so it doesn’t get so hot in the summer. Space for my telescope. 4 door hatchback.

What can i get? Not much. It seems hard to find a car that actually gets over 40 MPG. This one has an EPA rating of 32 MPG highway.

I recently much enjoyed watching David Bowie play Tesla in “The Prestige” (a flawed movie, unfortunately: in a plot about stage magic, the main plot device is true magic). But how badly I digress…

Whether there’s a sexy woman or not behind the wheel of this car, I seriously doubt — unless you thrive living on the edge, so to speak — that you’d opt to sit in the passenger’s seat, especially as this car hits 130 mph.

Brace yourself,;)
Cynthia

Of course the specific source of electricy changes from place to place but, globally, coal and natural gas are by far the most important, followed by hydropower and nuclear sources.

In some states, like Idaho, hydroelectricity is the dominant component, but not if you consider the entire country. It’s true that solar and wind powered stations are common in California, but the amount of electricity they produce is relatively small. In fact, for California in 2004 we have electricity generated from the following sources,

Natural gas 51.6%
Hydroelectric 17.5%
Nuclear 15.5%
Other renewables 12.4%

In Montana 65% of the electricity generated comes from coal. And no, burning natural gas and coal is not clean. Maybe in the future it will be, and under some other administration. For the time being, however, the US is the largest producer of global warming gases and a good fraction of those comes from electricity generation.

But maybe that is just me.

-cvj

Without a doubt, you must have an eagle eye to detect this subtle paradox: the paradox of geeky engineers with a left-wing bent overlapping well-to-do LA’ers with a postmodern sort of mindset.

This story vaguely reminds me of a social-worker friend of mine who just so happens to (believe it or not) model for auto-shows on the side. What a strange juxtaposition: on the one hand, she cares for the most disenfranchised folks in the community; however, on the other hand, she caters to the most enfranchised members of society. Indeed, such an odd juxtaposing at work here: rich and poor, side by side!

And yet, because my friend has an overall wholesome, girl-next-door look about her, she’s confined to modeling for automobiles with a –more or less– conservative appearance. Since Tesla is designed with lots of sex appeal in mind, I think it’s most fitting to equipped this red sports car with a rather racy looking model.;)

As for the apparent obsolescence of hybrids??? Europe has had rules and regulations that require automakers (US and Asian too) to build vehicles that are for the most part fully recycleable, parts or whole. Most hybrids imported into the US are built with those sorts of interchangeable systems, particularly the Toyota models. If the problem is batteries, then please research that field more thoroughly as there are now options available that last decades of recharging at higher amps than the trash that is “standard” equipment.

I love performance sports cars, owning them since my first 1962 Porsche purchased in 1965, right up to selling of my 2003 WRX in Jan 2005. Since then i have been without vehicles relying on public mass transit for conveyance. The Tesla looks cool, but i hope Lotus is building better cars now than they did in the early 70’s (that Elite was a mess). I can only hope, with Clifford, that this inspires dozens of manufacturers to join in the design and building of our future transportation.

Now, electric cars do save gasoline, which means buying less Arab oil, which definitely contributes to improving our political environment.

put more well known cars to shame,

Not that it is important, but I think “better known” is much more well sounding

So: what we need to do is to give incentives to people to buy really durable cars and hang on to them for 10 years at least. I know that I’d rather get a Porsche and keep it, than buy some rubbishy hybrid every 3 years. My present car is 9 years old.

My dad’s an EE currently undergoing a midlife crisis in the car arena, so I had the audacity to send him the link for this reason alone. Thanks for it!

Just wondering though, cost-wise how much cheaper is it to plug your car into the wall than to pay for gas?