Tesla Motors, the electric high-end sports car maker brought to you by SpaceX rocket man, Elon Musk, is sold out for one year. They are calling their August 2008 deliveries still the 2008 model year Roadster, but they have customers who have put $30,000 down instead of the usual $50,000 for the $100,000 car for deliveries through 4Q08. That's somewhere between 25% and 50% of their academic year 08-09 production.

I wanted to buy one except for
1) "No, we don't take trade-ins at this time"
2) No financing on the down payment until delivery (although it is refundable until about 3 months before delivery)
3) The Lotus Elise frame won't really accommodate someone who's 6'1" without taking off the roof to get through the door. Maybe if I lose a second 20 pounds, I'll try again.

I look forward to their next offering and I hope it has a slightly bigger cockpit. Other than to support Elon Musk, I want one because they are novel. That I'll be burning cheap coal as opposed to expensive oil is a nice way to subsidize my taste for novelty.

The reduced dependence on foreign oil stuff is pretty weak. For the $80,000 more that it costs to buy a Tesla, one can put 60 years worth of gasoline ($2.88*464 gallons per year) into the strategic petroleum reserve. But whatever they use to sell these babies so I can buy one is fair game.

It's kind of sad that Tesla Motors is still touting "single-driver access to carpool lanes" as an incentive; California stopped issuing new stickers almost a year ago.

Did Jane get hers yet?

Just FYI, Tesla isnt the only one coming to market with highway-capable electric or PHEV in near future. There are plenty of others.
Look up Phoenix Motorcars SUV for instance.

I'm holding out for something along the lines of the Volt... that is, that comes out at about the same total cost of ownership as a regular car.

Golly. A Lotus for twice the price. I can see where this is going to be a big seller. After a Porche GT3 for about the same money waxes your a*s on the road you can still feel smug about it.

It's about the tech in case of the Tesla or image in case of the Lotus, not ass waxing.

If you want to purely wax ass, Get a Vette Z06.

K: You're an idiot. The point of the Tesla is not to be the most amazingly awesome unbelievably powerful performance car ever. The point is that it doesn't look like a god damned turtle, and stands a good chance of beating one in a race.

Yea, but can it beat a 72 Datsun 1200 :-)

http://www.dragtimes.com/Datsun-1200-Timeslip-7484.html

Cost as pictured ~$15k

Sorry missed this thread earlier.

Mine is coming in October. It's green. I should point out that it is NOT a Lotus Elise - the chassis and body are quite different - but that it does use a lot of Lotus technology.

For a car that goes from zero to sixty in four flat, honestly, it's not a bad value. It's a tenth second quicker than the GT3, and about 0.6 faster than the Vette.

So there!

"Look up Phoenix Motorcars SUV for instance"

From what I can tell, the Tesla's advantages over the phoenix stuff is that (1) they look more ready to hit the larger consumer market soon--they're supposed to be delivering street-legal vehicles in just a few months, while Phoenix, for example from their site: April 12, 2007-- "First Round of Crash Test a Success for Phoenix Motorcars." (Tesla, I think was doing that stuff last year), and (2) they are using simpler, more proven battery technology. Phoenix's advantages appear to be that their advanced battery technology has some promising advantages (e.g. 10 minute charge time in the right setup), and their vehicle is probably much more practical than tesla's first offering. The Vold looks interesting but also looks a long way from the consumer market.

Look! Market competition! Completely different approaches--sports car with Lithium ion batteries, SUV with nanostore batteries. May the best win. Or may each win for different markets. Sure beats having some single government mandated "the one electric car for everyone" program.