It's Electric!

Did you know this car existed?
The GM EV1.

It doesn’t. Not anymore. I just saw the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car I won’t try to recap the information offered in the film, but I was shocked (no pun intended.) The GM EV1 was first offered to the public in 1996. It was only available for lease and only in California and Arizona. I was 14 in ’96, I knew about cars, but I didn’t know about this one. By 2000 when GM started crushing the EV1s I was 18 and definitely knew about cars. How come I’d never heard of any production-level electric car? I still don’t understand why they had to destroy all the cars, but you know, whatever.

Happily, there’s this one. . . .

It does 0-60 in about 4 seconds, has a top speed of 130 and can go 250 miles on a charge. That and it’s about twice as energy efficient as a Toyota Prius. Daaayum. It’s the Tesla Roadster. They’ve sold out for 2007 but you can get on the list for 2008. The base price is $92,000, and I’d recommend going with the optional hard-top for another $3500. If you live outside of Tesla’s service area it’s another $8000 bucks for your warranted service. (Although the electric motors are far less complex and far less likely to break down.) The best thing about these cars, besides the speed and efficiency, is they look bad-ass! (No offense to any Prius owners.)

I had always heard that you couldn’t get as much torque in an electric because of something to do with the explosivity of gasoline or some . . . hell I dunno. . . anyway turns out that’s all bullshit. You know how when you first accelerate in most cars it’s a little bit slow and then when you get the rpms up you start to get going? Apparently with the Tesla there’s none of that lag. According to their numbers this car is a hell of a lot more than just a pretty golf cart.

They take about three or four hours to charge, so road trips are out of the question. But 250 miles is more than anyone I know drives day to day, so you just have to plug it in at night. Tesla also says the batteries will perform for over 100,000 miles. (500 full charges.) That ain’t bad.

The car itself has zero emissions, it doesn’t even have a tailpipe. Though the power plant probably does pollute, even if you get your power from a coal-burning plant you’ll be polluting about half as much as the best hybrids.

Keep in mind that the Tesla Roadster is not mass-produced the same way a Camry, Civic, or even Porsche 911 is, if it were the price tag could easily go down. Indeed cars like this seem to be the way of the future, and GM and Ford seem to be going the way of the buffalo (check the financial news,) they certainly are determined to take as much money with them as possible though.

Now, if only I could get my hands on a hundred grand. . .