Bring on the White Star.

Someone owns a RAV4 EV around here. I saw it on the freeway this morning when I was riding my scooter in to work.

I wish I had a dollar for every troll that was spouting on about how this company was a scam and that we'd never see a single car on the road.

Neil: I wish I had a dollar for every PENNY you'd be getting, so that I could even begin to think about paying $100,000.00 for a 2-seater electric car, high-performance or not! At that price it won't be a market-changer just something to admire on 'Top-Gear'.

Floatplane, I disagree. It has the potential to be a market changer by creating an exotic and high-performance image for electric cars. Just think if all those gearheads reading Motor Trend that will be drooling over the Tesla. Electric cars now sound cool - where before they were written off by many as tiny-wheeled granola-mobiles (Prius). This is a big step forward for the mass exceptance of electric vehiles.

Justin:

Exactly. There is no reason why EVs have to be "punishment cars". Marketplace acceptance will grow out of a change in image, from itty bitty rollerskates into roadsters and sports sedans. Even Mitsubishi's MiEV looks sharp for a small car, IMO.

I am thrilled that finally a good performing and good looking EV is in series production and being delivered to customers. Tesla is making car history like no other they even beat the Chinese on this issue ;-). OK the car is not entirely ready and this is the reason that they wait to do a 100 a month until next year (still got to make a permanent transmission and they had an embarrassing issue with selling a $100k sports car with a non-adjustable front seat). But these issues are minor. They solved the key issue whit the battery and the new drive train and showed that they were professional enough to get it through the tough US crash testing procedures which is a big thing for a small firm with an entirely different car.

This is great. I hope it is an eye opener to everybody in the vehicle industry that it is possible to do a great car that performs without any pollution or important operating cost.

If $100,000.00 is too much for you, there's the Fisker for $80,000 and it seats five.

Congratulations! This is a major earth changing accomplishment. It is very good news in light of the recently announced delays in introducing an electric car into the United States by Nissan and Mitsubishi not to mention the price increases and low initial production rate for the Volt. Is Phoenix Motors delivering any vehicles yet?

"Tesla is making car history like no other they even beat the Chinese on this issue ;-)"

In light of the crippling bad PR China is suffering from Human Rights violations in Tibet, Burma and Sudan, and the poor quality of their engineering (Cheri) - this is not a major achievement. That they beat the Germans, Japanese, Italians, British, Koreans and United Kingdom, is.

And with very positive reviews from three auto-enthusiast magazines - the good word of EVs will spread. Looks like the Valley is still leading the way.

In marketing, there is a technique of trying to get the cool, famous and influential people to be seen using your products so that many others will envy and desire those things as well. A few thousand Tesla vehicles with the right drivers behind the wheel could have a very positive impact on market acceptance of the "brand" of electric vehicles. Consequently, when batteries get cheap enough for primarily electric mode cars to be affordable, the mass market may be quite receptive.

It is a definite start and I agree about marketing.

There's a nightclub on the weekends that lines up top of the line foreign imports from Ferrari and Porshe in front of their doors. This is all marketing gimick by the dealership who pays for those parking spaces to be seen by the highly paid professionals that dance, drink and partake of festivities on premises.

The Tesla crew will eventually have a car in this line up one day as they expand their horizons thru other dealers or their own.

It is a start. One that is sorely needed and I look forward more to their next offerings, as well as Phoenix and others for competition. This is what America is all about. Ingenuity, risk, guts, going for it in the marketplace of ideas.

Yes, the Tesla Roadster is expensive, but its designed to compete with other expensive luxury sportscars, not with your regular Camry/Accord/Taurus, etc.

Just like how at one point computers were ridiculously expensive, and the idea of a private individual owning a computer was insane. Even after PCs and home computers were introduced in the late 70s/early 80s they were still too expensive for most families and were seen as a curiosity for geeks.

Who would have predicted back then that you'd be able to get computers as fast and large as we can today for so little money?

At some point the prices of batteries will fall, just as the prices of processors and memory have fallen. At some point there will be enough car companies making electric vehicles that competition will keep the price of the vehicles in check. But none of those things will happen without first going through the phase where electric cars are a ridiculously expensive curiosity. However, if Tesla can help create that market, they can begin learning how to make the cars better and more efficient. Engineers can begin to find what does and doesn't work with the current designs, and start improving them.

But they can't go from no electic cars to cheap, awesome electric cars that everyone loves overnight. No industry or technology ever has.

gr:-
"That they beat the Germans, Japanese, Italians,
British, Koreans and United Kingdom, is."

Firstly, the British are inhabitants of the United Kingdom
Secondly, last I heard, Tesla Roadster production was at the Lotus factory in England, Great Britain, United Kingdom.

gr:-
"That they beat the Germans, Japanese, Italians,
British, Koreans and United Kingdom, is."

Firstly, the British are inhabitants of the United Kingdom
Secondly, last I heard, Tesla Roadster production was at the Lotus factory in England, Great Britain, United Kingdom.

Congratulations to Tesla for this awesome achievement!

Can't believe this news is posted in the side "In Brief" column here at GCC??? I mean, what do you got to do to be in the main column here?

well, the "In Brief" column stays up longer (isn't updated as quickly), so it may get more exposure.

I can't wait to see one of these Teslas on the road. and thank you Michael for this: "This is what America is all about. Ingenuity, risk, guts, going for it in the marketplace of ideas."

I'd still like to know how they managed to twice screw up selection of an appropriate two-speed transmission.

It's been alluded to above, but I believe Tesla is taking exactly the right approach. Start up costs for a new venture like this are ALWAYs gonna make the first models prohibitively expensive. Even if you tried to develop a Yaris EV equivalent, you'd probably have to charge $40,000 to keep your company viable. No one's proven that there is an audience that's gonna pay that kind of premium.

However, if you have an EV that blows the doors off of other high performace cars, all of a sudden you target a known market: the market that has proven over time they are willing to pay a premium for performance. They might not even CARE if it's an EV. If it's crazy fast and unique, your gonna easily sell 900 to the Jay Leno's of the world, and have several thousand other people drooling.

This will help subsidize future more affordable models.

Thomas Lankester,

You are absolutely correct! I did not review the doc before posting. While you are also correct that the production Teslas are being built at a Lotus factory in Hethel, UK (Britain, England!) - this is a project conceived, financed and designed by US entrepreneurs - largely from Silicon Valley. And there have been great dollops of GCC nay-saying against computer geeks trying to make electric cars.

Bottom line is they've done it and there will be dozens more EV/PHEVs from old-school automakers over the next few years. Beating out China's engineering should be little surprise.

I see Tesla being bought out by GM eventually....too much of a threat.

Better record than Hymotion, which is still not selling any conversion kits, more than one year after they promised.

I wish I had a dollar for every troll that was spouting on about how this company was a scam and that we'd never see a single car on the road.

I wish I had a Euro for every troll that was spouting on about how wonderful Tesla is every time the company issued a press release, all the while oblivious to the fact that there still isn't a single car on the road.

^Actually, the press release indicates they've delivered the first production roadster, so there is at least 1 production Tesla on the road...

Can I take a dollar for every tin-hat wearing troll claiming impending elections have the Republicans artifically pushing down the price of gasoline to garner votes? I'm still waiting for that to magically happen but the gas prices seem to be going higher instead...

Interesting.

If the 900 people that are in the queue actually come through and buy the car, that's $90 million in revenue. Pretty sweet.

I hope they make it.