Independent Silicon Valley-based automaker Tesla has unveiled the Tesla Roadster — an all-electric car capable of accelerating to 60 mph in just four seconds, while offering equivalent mileage of 135 mpg, and a 250 mile range. The high-performance roadster is capable of hanging with a Ferrari F430, Porsche Carrera S, or BMW M5. The car has a more-than-sufficient top speed of 130 mph, the automaker said. Funding came from several big names in the technology world, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Deliveries of the Tesla Roadster in the United States are expected to begin next summer.

The car's impressive range is due to its state-of-the-art lithium-ion Energy Storage System. The Roadster's ESS provides power to the entire vehicle, including the motor. Its durable, tamper-resistant enclosure includes: 6,831 lithium-ion cells; a network of microprocessors for maintaining charge balance and temperature among the batteries; a cooling system; and an independent safety system designed to disconnect power outside the enclosure under a variety of detectable safety situations.

Using a unique two-speed manual transmission, the Tesla Roadster's power comes from a 3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor coupled with the Power Electronics Module (PEM) which provides multiple functionality of inverting direct current to 3-phase alternating current, the charging system, and the regenerative braking system.

"The Tesla Roadster delivers sports car performance without using any gasoline," said CEO Martin Eberhard. "This is what we hoped to achieve when we started the company three years ago, to build a car with zero emissions that people would love to drive."

The Tesla Roadster comes complete with its Electric Vehicle Service Equipment (EVSE), a home-based charging system. An optional mobile charging kit, for re-charging while away from the EVSE, also features this automatic disconnect system. Charging the Tesla Roadster takes approximately 3.5 hours.

The Tesla Roadster is capable of driving up to 250 miles (EPA Highway) on a single charge, a range roughly triple that of previous mass-produced electric vehicles, like General Motors' EV1.

"It didn't make sense to sell a car that couldn't go 90 miles on a charge. You'd spend more time charging the old EVs than driving them," said Eberhard. "Lithium-ion technology, which has been proven in many different applications, has allowed us to achieve exactly what we thought it would in terms of power, range and efficiency."

The body design of the Tesla Roadster, which included a collaborative effort by the company's employees, has been headed by Barney Hatt, Principal Designer at the Lotus Design Studio in England. The result is a sleek, stylish sports car that will appeal to enthusiasts and environmentalists the world over.

Tesla says its goal is to not only meet, but to surpass the rigorous standards of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, or FMVSS, as implemented by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Launch event

The car will be on display before a throng of well-wishers, car buffs, and potential customers Wednesday evening during Tesla's "Signature One Hundred" event at Barker Hangar.

More than 350 invited guests will spend the evening learning about the new sports car, speaking with Tesla Motors executives, and going for rides along the tarmac at the Santa Monica Airport, adjacent to the event. Many signed up to be among the first to take delivery of the Tesla Roadster, becoming Signature One Hundred Members.

Celebrities in attendance will include actor Ed Begley Jr., producer Richard Donner, businessman Michael Eisner, PayPal founder (and Tesla Motors Chairman) Elon Musk, Participant Productions' Founder and CEO Jeff Skoll, also of eBay fame, and actor Bradley Whitford, who starred in "The West Wing."

"We're thrilled to have the support of top people from so many different industries," said Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors. "High-tech, CleanTech, entertainment, automotive, you name it. It's gratifying to have others realize the significance or what Tesla Motors is doing."

Background

Tesla co-founders Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who serves as Vice President, Engineering, have brought together a team of automotive industry veterans plus Silicon Valley electronics and Internet engineers to bring the Tesla Roadster to life.

Research and Development for Tesla Motors is based at the Corporate Headquarters in San Carlos, Calif. Engines are manufactured at Tesla's facility in Taiwan, and assembly takes place at Tesla's plant in England.

Eberhard and Tarpenning provided the early funding for the company, and were joined in 2003 by Musk, CEO of SpaceX, who is the major investor in the company and serves as Chairman of Tesla Motors.

Musk worked with Eberhard and Tarpenning to attract more investors and approach Venture Capital firms, and in June 2006, Tesla Motors announced that the company had secured and additional $40 million in financing led by Musk and VantagePoint Venture Partners, one of the largest CleanTech investors in the Silicon Valley.

Lotus has signed an agreement to build the all-electric Tesla Roadster, according to the British automaker's hometown newspaper, the Norfolk Eastern Daily Press. Tesla is the Silicon Valley-based startup that recently unveiled the electric sports car — with a 250 mile range and 0 to 60 mph time of 4.0 seconds. The car is based on the Lotus Elise platform, and was designed by a team headed by Lotus design boss Barney Hatt. Funding came from several big names in the technology world, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and PayPal founder Elon Musk. The car is expected to cost between $85,000 and $120,000. Deliveries of the Tesla Roadster in the United States are expected to begin next summer. Tesla hopes to sell up to 1,000 roadsters a year.

Thank you for your interest in Tesla Motors. It’s been a little more than a month since we unveiled our Tesla Roadster and the response we’ve received from the media, the marketplace and interested buyers like you have exceeded our expectations. We appreciate your patience as we respond to your inquiries.
As you may have heard, we quickly filled all of the reservations for the Signature 100 edition of the Tesla Roadster. As a result, we reached a decision to open up reservations for an additional series of the next 100 produced Tesla Roadsters. These vehicles, like the Signature 100, will be fully loaded versions of the Tesla Roadster. This helps us to minimize the time it will take to get your car delivered to you. Your Tesla Roadster will include:

Removable hard top and soft top
Navigation system
Mobile charging cable
Upgraded leather interior
A/C, power locks and windows, cruise control
Heated seats, stereo w/ CD player, iPod connector
Valet mode to limit car’s range, acceleration and speed
Security system
Dual airbags, ABS brakes, traction control
Tesla-branded floor mats
These next 100 Tesla Roadsters have an anticipated delivery date in the fall of 2007. As with the Signature 100, these Tesla Roadsters will be priced at $100,000 (excluding taxes and other governmental fees). To secure a spot, we require a reservation payment of $75,000 which can be applied to the sales price at the time of delivery. This reservation payment is fully refundable at any time up to and including the day of delivery.
If you happen to live outside of a 100 mile radius of one of our initial Customer Care Centers (locations to be in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City and Miami), we will be charging a one time out-of-service area fee of $8000. This fee will allow you to receive the same high level of service that customers within 100 mile radius will receive and will cover the cost of sending a Tesla Motors-trained technician to your home or transporting your car to our nearest facility for servicing if necessary.

To confirm your interest in reserving a Tesla Roadster, please send an email to reservations@teslamotors.com. For general comments and inquiries, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions located at www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/faqs.php.

Again we thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,


Gretchen Joyce
Vice President Sales
Tesla Motors, Inc.

Electric Power: Drive Quickly, Tread Lightly

Most electric vehicles operate under the assumption that driving is merely a necessary evil if you need to get someplace you can’t reach on foot or bike. The result has been cars that are designed, built, and marketed in ways that refuse to glorify driving.

We respectfully disagree. We believe driving is exhilarating. Just watch any child on a go-cart and the joy is plain to see. And when you can soar along at top speed, knowing the only oil in the car is in the transmission, the only emissions are the songs from the radio, the ride becomes more enjoyable still.

The Ultimate Multi-Fuel Vehicle

Electric cars equal freedom. Not simply from oil reliance, but from dependence on any specific power source. Electric power can be generated from natural gas, coal, solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear sources — or a combination of all of them — without changing the design of the car. No matter how or when the world changes, the car adapts, making it immune from obsolescence.

We foresee a day when all cars run on electric power and when people will struggle to remember a time when a love of driving came with a side order of guilt.

No More Tradeoffs

Up until now, if you wanted a car with amazing gas mileage, you’d pick something like the leading hybrid; but when you pressed down the gas pedal to zip up a freeway on-ramp, you'd likely be a little disappointed — it takes over 10 seconds to reach 60 miles per hour. On the other hand, if you demanded the 0 to 60 times of a $300,000 supercar, you'd wind up with an embarrassing 9 miles to the gallon in the city.

How It Works

When you build a car that's electric, you start with one built-in advantage: Electric cars just don't have to be as complex mechanically as the car you're probably driving now. Sophisticated electronics and software take the place of the pounds and pounds of machinery required to introduce a spark and ignite the fuel that powers an internal combustion engine.

For example, the typical four-cylinder engine of a conventional car comprises over a hundred moving parts. By comparison, the motor of the Tesla Roadster has just one: the rotor. So there's less weight to drive around and fewer parts that could break or wear down over time.

But the comparison doesn't end with the counting of moving parts. The engine and transmission of a conventional car also need lubricating oils, filters, coolant, clutches, spark plugs and wires, a PCV valve, oxygen sensors, a timing belt, a fan belt, a water pump and hoses, a catalytic converter, and a muffler — all items requiring service, and all items that aren't needed in an electric car.

The Tesla Roadster's elegantly designed powertrain consists of just the four main components discussed below. Mind you, these aren't "off-the-shelf" components, and each includes innovations, both small and large. But when you build a car from the ground up, you have the luxury of questioning every assumption — and to distill as you reinvent.

The Energy Storage System (ESS)

When we set out to build a high-performance electric car, the biggest challenge was obvious from the start: the battery. Its complexities are clear: it's heavy, expensive, and offers limited power and range. Yet it has one quality that eclipses these disadvantages and motivated us to keep working tirelessly: it's clean.

The Tesla Roadster's battery pack — the car's "fuel tank" — represents the biggest innovation in the Tesla Roadster and is one of the largest and most advanced battery packs in the world. We've combined basic proven lithium ion battery technology with our own unique battery pack design to provide multiple layers of safety. It's light, durable, recyclable, and it is capable of delivering enough power to accelerate the Tesla Roadster from 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds. Meanwhile, the battery stores enough energy for the vehicle to travel more about 245 miles (EPA city/highway) without recharging, something no other production electric vehicle in history can claim.

Motor

Some people find it hard to imagine our car's Lamborghini-beating acceleration comes from a motor about the size of a watermelon. And while most car engines have to be moved with winches or forklifts, ours weighs about 70 pounds — a strong person could carry it around in a backpack (although we don't recommend it). Compare that to the mass of machinery under the hood of $300,000 supercars that still can't accelerate as quickly as the Tesla Roadster.

But more important than the motor's size or weight is its efficency. Without proper efficiency, a motor will convert electrical energy into heat instead of rotational energy. So we designed our motor to have efficiencies of 85 to 95 percent; this way the precious stored energy of the battery pack ends up propelling you down the road instead of just heating up the trunk.

Transmission

Our transmission couples the fuel efficiency of a manual with the driving ease of an automatic. The Tesla Roadster has only two forward gears, allowing you to fine-tune your driving experience (but either gear will work for most driving scenarios). Unlike a manual transmission, the car will not stall if you have it in the wrong gear. There's also no clutch pedal. Just move the lever and the electronic control module takes care of the shift, so you can launch from a full stop to freeway speed without taking your focus off the road, your foot off the accelerator, or your hands off the wheel.

Power Electronics Module (PEM)

Most of the subsystems in the Tesla Roadster are completely electronic and under direct software control. But unlike all other cars, these systems are not a hodge-podge of independent systems — instead, they are designed as an integrated system, the way complex network and computer systems are designed today.

You'll see the hub of this network every time you pop the trunk — the Power Electronics Module. When you shift gears or accelerate in the Tesla Roadster, the PEM translates your commands into precisely timed voltages, telling the motor to respond with the proper speed and direction of rotation. The PEM also controls motor torque, charging, and regenerative braking, and it monitors things like the voltage delivered by the ESS, the speed of rotation of the motor, and the temperatures of the motor and power electronics.

The PEM controls over 200 kW of electrical power during peak acceleration — enough power to illuminate 2,000 incandescent light bulbs.

Tesla Motors (TSLA) will unveil its next-generation sports car to the public this weekend at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

The Tesla Roadster 2.5 features improvements in design and technology, including a new front fascia, rear diffuser, improved seat comfort, sound dampening and an optional large touch screen navigation system with back-up camera. Improved interior sound reduction techniques, including new front fender liner material, make the cabin even quieter.

The Festival of Speed is the world’s largest motoring garden party – a unique weekend that brings together a heady mix of cars, stars and motor sport ‘royalty’ to create the largest car culture festival worldwide. Held in the immaculate grounds of Goodwood House, this annual hill-climb extravaganza celebrates all things automotive.

‘Goodwood is one of the most beloved motoring events in the world and a highlight of the English summer – so it’s only appropriate that this iconic celebration will be the public launch of the latest Roadster,’ said Cristiano Carlutti, Tesla’s Vice President of European Operations.

‘Absolutely Extraordinary’

Tesla has already become a darling of Britain’s beloved Goodwood, which this spring hosted the first official UK motor race that included electric vehicles, a competition sanctioned by the UK Motor Sport Association. One of Britian’s most respected motoring correspondents described a recent Roadster stint on a Goodwood hill climb as an 'absolutely extraordinary performance.'

UK companies that purchase a Roadster benefit from a 100 percent Writing Down Allowance, meaning they can deduct the price of the car from their taxable profits. The Roadster is the only sports car that has ever qualified for such a tax incentive in the UK. Roadster drivers park for free and without time limits in various London boroughs, they get four hours of free charging at certain parking sites, and they are exempt from the Showroom Tax.

Tesla launched the new Roadster this week and is delivering to customers now. More than 1,200 current Tesla owners in at least 23 countries have logged over five million electric miles in their Roadsters.

Prospective customers can see the Tesla Roadster 2.5 at Goodwood or at the London showroom at 49-51 Cheval Place in Knightsbridge, near Harrod’s. Tesla is now delivering this latest version of the car in all Tesla markets in Europe, Asia and North America.