A press release worth reading:

Limited Edition Tesla Roadster Available Spring 2009

Hi Tesla Enthusiast,

When you last contacted us we were selling our high performance, 100% electric Tesla Roadster only in the continental United States. We are now selling special limited edition Roadsters into Europe, starting in 2009. We originally planned on expanding into Europe much later, but several factors have allowed us to accelerate our expansion. Check out VP of Sales, Marketing and Service Darryl Siry’s latest blog announcing the details and our April 9th press release.

This special limited edition will sell for €99,000 for a fully loaded car, to be delivered beginning in the spring of 2009. Similar to our early customers in the US, Europeans who reserve the car early will receive a special Signature edition version of the world’s most exclusive high-performance vehicle. For details on reserving this special edition Roadster contact Tesla at eurosales@teslamotors.com or call +1 650-413-6200.

In case you missed it, the Roadster has recently been reviewed by: AUTOBILD, Car & Driver, Automobile, Motor Trend, Road & Track, and Auto Week magazines - check out the reviews by clicking on the links.

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One of the aspects I like most about hybrid and electric-powered vehicles is regenerative braking.

Regeneration braking (“regen”) occurs when the electric motor is used as a generator, so charging the battery and in turn slowing the vehicle.

Regen is important for energy-efficiency - the energy that would normally be wasted in friction braking is instead utilised. In many driving conditions this can result in a substantial improvement in fuel economy (hybrids) or driving range (battery electric).

However, I like regen most because it is really effective from a driving perspective.

Unlike friction braking, the faster that you are going, the better regen works. The faster-moving vehicle has more potential energy that in turn can be turned into more electric energy. That’s the case with friction braking as well (the potential energy is higher so more heat energy can be generated) but since conventional brakes reduce in effectiveness as they are required to do more work, the feeling is not the same.

Regen braking can feel like the ‘inexorable giant hand’ pulling you back, all with smoothness and a degree of control that is impossible to obtain with friction brakes.

And let’s look at the subject of control for a moment.

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Unusually, in this blog I want to refer you all to the AutoSpeed article that was published today. As I have written above, I think it’s probably the most important article that we’ll publish this year.

So what’s it about?

In short, the article is based on a paper written by Dr Andrew Simpson when he was working for the Sustainable Energy Group at the University of Queensland. His paper looks at a huge number of alternative fuels and drivelines, concluding which are the best from both energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions perspectives.

Andrew has given us permission to use major excerpts of the paper, and in fact went through it again to ensure that his conclusions are current. The full paper can be downloaded from the link at the end of the article.

His is a detailed ‘well-to-wheel’ study, where the environmental costs of producing the fuel and the efficiency of the cars using them are evaluated. Even better, they’re all benchmarked against a real car, the Holden Commodore. Even better again, the alternative fuelled cars are modelled to have the same range and performance as the Commodore.

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A while ago I attended an electric car show held in Sydney. I made the 2000-odd kilometre trip in my Peugeot 405 diesel, a car that, incidentally, gained high Fives (in litres/100km) for the trip.

At the show I briefly sampled three of the home-converted electric cars – a very interesting experience. And on the long drive home to the Gold Coast, I had plenty of time to reflect on these cars.

The electric cars I drove each retained the original gearbox: the electric motor was bolted up to the ‘box and the ratios could be selected by the driver. Typically, the cars were started off in second gear and then third and fourth and fifth gears were used as appropriate. (I used first gear off the line and felt an immediate gain in starting performance.)

But none of the cars I drove had performance that came close to conventional petrol engine (or even commercial hybrids). Even when the electric motor was rated at a higher power than the original engine, the massive weight of batteries substantially dulled the resulting power/weight ratio.

Putting in a more powerful electric motor (or running two electric motors) would of course help solve that, but at the expense of greater electrical power consumption that in turn would need either more batteries or result in a shorter range (and none of the ranges were very good to start with!). However, all the cars could easily exceed the 110 km/h open-road speed limit.

Clearly, what is needed is an electric motor that has only enough power to do the job – but no more.

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