Tesla Model S Unveiled: A Great Concept, but Now the Wait Begins
By Greg Johnson March 26, 2009Electric Car Won't Go Into Production Until Late 2011, If Financing Comes Through
It Goes: Tesla chairman Elon Musk takes Model S prototype for a spin during press conference.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
First of all, we're talking here about a plastic-bodied prototype of a car that isn't scheduled to go into production for almost two and a half years. Remember, please, that a lot can be done, or undone, in that span of time.
That said, Elon Musk and the rest of the crew at Tesla Motors pulled the covers off the proposed Tesla S battery-electric sport sedan today, and likely will be wallowing in publicity from the event for weeks to come.
The car, which seems to draw a lot from Jaguar and Aston Martin, was designed by former Mazda North America design chief Franz von Holzhausen, who calls the car's silhouette an example of "classic modernity."
He and Musk liberally refer to the "S" as the world's first mass-production, full-function electric car, even though production won't start -- if all the money can be rounded up -- until late in 2011 and Nissan Motor Co. has said it will begin selling a mass-production, full-function electric car in the U.S. in 2010.
Whether first or second, it's a very good-looking four-door, glass-topped hatchback that hides the hatch quite well.
Fast, Far, 'Affordable'
And whatever one may think of its roots, von Holzhausen says the "S" is a clean-sheet design he began after joining Tesla last August and listing to Chairman and CEO Musk's vision for the vehicle intended to replace the Roadster as Tesla's signature product.
That vision, according to dot-com millionaire-entrepreneur Musk (right), was to build an electric car that would hold a big family, go fast, be beautiful, offer enough range between charges to appeal to most buyers, and not cost an arm and a leg.
Let's get fast out of the way: Musk says the car will be capable of a sub-6-second sprint from zero to 60 mph, and will have an electronically limited top speed of 135 mph. A "sport" model to come later will do that same 0-60 in under 5 seconds, he said.
Musk, who staged the unveiling at his Space X rocket development facility in the Southern California community of Hawthorne -- no doubt to draw more press than he'd get up in Tesla's official home in the Bay Area community of San Carlos, near San Francisco -- confirmed that the base model of the "S" (the initial apparently doesn't stand for anything) will cost $57,400.
He actually said it will have "an affordable starting price of $49,900," but that, ladies and gents, is after you qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit that is supposed to still be around in 2011 when production is slated to begin.
The sticker price, meanwhile, will still be $57,400, which is probably affordable to lots of people, but we don't know any of them personally.
That's with a battery pack, by the way, that is slightly smaller than the one on the Tesla Roadster but is capable of powering the much larger "S" for 160 miles of combined city and highway driving.
Add bucks, probably lots of 'em, for either of the two optional larger battery packs the company says will be rated at 220 miles and 300 miles.
Musk says, though, that if you figure $4-a-gallon gasoline (and we do figure it will get there, and stay there, by the time the "S" and other electric cars and plug-in hybrids are hitting the market) that the cost of electricity to run the Model S will represent a real bargain, effectively cutting $10,000 or more from the lifetime cost of the car versus a 15-mpg sports tourer that swills 1,000 gallons or more per year.
He said he expects the "S" batteries to have a lifespan of close to 10 years and to cost less than $5,000 to replace when they do wear out.
Room for Seven
Tesla's rear-wheel design places the batteries and control electronics in a flat package under the floor, with the electric drive motor and single-speed transmission (all a good EV needs) incorporated between the rear wheels.
That frees up loads of interior space -- space for seven (seven!!) says Musk.
That's two adults in the front buckets, three in the backseat (they'd probably best be really good friends, though) and two children in an optional rear-facing seat that would install under the glass of the rear hatch, in what is ordinarily a cargo area.
Remove the kid seat and fold down the rear bench seat and the "S" has room for a mountain bike -- with front wheel attached -- or a 50-inch flat-screen TV (as cargo, not for watching) in the rear.
And under the long nose, because there's no engine, there is more cargo space -- along with the radiator and the air-conditioner compressor.
Some Technical Stuff
The standard battery will be made up of 5,500 lithium-ion cells, each a little larger than a standard AA battery, all linked together and fused and cooled for heat protection and to isolate any cells that might act up.
The 220-mile pack will have 8,000 cells (the Tesla Roadster pack has 6,800) and the 300-mile pack will also have 8,000 but they will be of an advanced lithium chemistry that enables them to store and release more energy than the smaller packs.
(Check out our video of the Model S Introduction)
All of the battery packs use cells that are more advanced than those in the Roadster -- making the 8,000-cell packs 50 percent more efficient yet 25 percent smaller than the Roadster pack.
The "S" will be rechargeable in 45 minutes with a commercial fast-charge system, 3 hours with a 220-volt system (the standard) and 8 hours or so with common 110-volt household current.
The flat battery pack can be designed into the car to be easily and quickly removed and swapped for a fully charged pack when it is depleted.
Musk said this doesn't mean that it will be designed that way, or that Tesla is going to evangelize for a national battery swap standard, but it does mean that if everything came together and batter swapping instead of plug-in recharging became the thing to do, the Tesla S would be able to do it.
Aerodynamics will help with efficiency - the company is shooting for a final design (there will be tweaks to the prototype, von Holzhausen acknowledged) that will boast a drag coefficient of "0.26 to 0.27" versus 0.35 for the Tesla Roadster and 0.25 for the 2010 Prius (lower is better).
Although it is a big car (not a full-sized, Ford Crown Victoria large car, more like a generous mid-size, a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry on steroids -and we're talking size, not looks), aluminum body panels and an aluminum chassis will help keep weight "down" to a manageable 4,000 pounds, give or take. That's including a roughly 600-pound battery pack (900 pounds for the larger, longer-distance packs)
Interior controls. the buttons, dials and knobs part - have been replaced by two digital gauges and an LED screen, which keeps the IP nice and clean. 
Small gauges in front of the driver display all the stuff you need to know right away - speed, state of charge (that's battery-talk for how much juice is left) and stuff like that.
A gi-normous 17-inch touch screen in the center of the IP does everything else,and can be custom configured for each driver. In addition to displaying all sorts of information about the vehicle, it is an infotainment center and a full-function wireless computer.
Funding? Competition?
If we sounded somewhat disbelieving up above, well, our job is not to sugarcoat.
We want to be believers and we want Tesla to succeed, and if you've got the wherewithal we hope you'll put a Tesla S" on your list of things to buy.
But it is our job to question, and there are are few.
The company is still waiting for funding to equip a factory and get started on final engineering, crash testing and production. Musk said Tesla has found an assembly plant in Southern California - likely an empty aerospace factory near the Space X complex - and is nailing down the lease details,
Musk says he's hoping to qualify for a federally guaranteed $350 million loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program, but the Treasury Department hasn't yet decided who among the more than 30 applicants will get a cut of the $25 billion in the fund: GM, Ford and Chrysler alone have asked for more than $25 billion for their various projects.
But that's Tesla's Plan A for funding, says Musk.
Plan B is a $250 million federal loan under a different and easier-to-qualify-for program, Title 17. Tesla's already on the short list 0f 16 candidates for loans under that program and Musk says he knows of no reason Tesla won't get the money, which could start flowing this summer.
But most car industry people we know say $250 million, or $350 million, isn't likely to get Tesla all the way to where it wants to go 20,000 "S" cars a year.
There's other income - Tesla is selling batteries to Daimler for 1,000 electric Smarts and that, Musk says, could lead to even more business marketing the company's unique battery and battery control systems.
And there's always private investment, although in the present economy there's not all that much loose cash that's willing to go out there and go to work.
Beyond that, Musk didn't mention a Plan C.
A second question: Will an independent Tesla be able to withstand the competition it surely faces from Nissan and in 2011 and 2012, just when the "S" is getting started, from plug-in hybrids that will be aggressively marketed other independents such as rival Fisker Automotoive by the likes of Toyota, Ford, and - if it is still around, and chances of that are looking better - General Motors Corp.
Some analysts see Tesla becoming a unit of a larger manufacturer - although the way things are going, Musk just might end up with enough funding to swallow one of his potential competitors instead of being swallowed.
And there's this third little wrinkle: With the world, in a best-case scenario, just emerging from a catastrophic global recession late next year, will there be enough people willing to spend money on a car like this.
We think the answer to that last one is yes -Tesla only needs to sell 20,000 a year, globally, to make money, Musk says, and that's a goal that should be easy to achieve. Even during the Great Depression there still were people buying pricey Duesenbergs, Cords and Rolls-Royces.
As for the rest, we hope it all works out, and we'll bring you the news as it happens.
Greg Johnson contributed to this article.
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Photos by Scott Jacobs
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