Electric Vehicles – No Longer a Trade-Off
ByElectric cars of the past usually involved asking people to make a tradeoff. With some notable exceptions such as GM’s EV-1 car and Toyota’s RAV-4 small electric SUV, most commercial electric cars developed in the 1990s had limited range of 150 miles or less on a battery charge, acceleration that most drivers would call wimpy, small size, and styling (or lack thereof) that appealed only to the extreme alternative-lifestyle demographic. For many reasons—some alleged by environmental activists to be conspiratorial—most automakers stopped making commercial electric cars by the early 2000s. Some EVs are still on the road and the technology has a very loyal following, but it has been little more than a tiny blip in the global vehicle market. Until now.
Tesla Motors, Silicon Valley’s first auto company, is out to prove that the all-electric car can be high-performance, sexy, and profitable. The $98,000 Tesla Roadster sports car, powered by more than 6,300 tiny lithium-ion batteries charged from a home socket, does 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds. It’s caught major buzz among California’s well-heeled high-tech crowd, selling out its first production run of 600 cars in a few months, with the company now ramping up to build a few thousand. The cars were scheduled to hit the road in 2008. Forbes called it “the new car that best lived up to the hype” in 2006.
Tesla is out to chart a dramatic new future for EVs that’s light-years away from what cofounder and former CEO Martin Eberhard calls the “ugly pathetic little cars” of the 1990s. “Electric vehicles in the past were designed by people who viewed driving as a necessary evil,” he says. “We wanted to build a car that doesn’t force you to make a choice between performance and efficiency.” Tesla is starting at the high end of the market with the Roadster, then plans to get broader and cheaper with a five-passenger, all-electric sedan selling for $50,000 to $65,000 in 2009. It’s aiming to build and sell 10,000 to 30,000 of those annually. “As an entrepreneur I’ve learned that the right time to enter a market is when your product is just barely possible,” says Eberhard. “If it’s really easy, then you’re too late.”
We agree with the business potential of the company’s vision. But we’re even more intrigued by the opportunity, exemplified by Tesla, of EV technology (and its variations) enabling a whole new type of car company. Rather than trying to beat the world’s auto giants at their own game, as last century’s visionaries, such as Preston Tucker and John DeLorean, tried to do and ultimately failed, Tesla and other EV manufacturers are carving out a whole new business opportunity and model inspired by Silicon Valley. Tesla is partnering with a range of technology providers (such as British race car legend Lotus for the Roadster chassis) in designing its car. And it has deals with solar PV installers, such as Solar City in Foster City, California, to jointly sell both the Roadster and the clean-energy source—rooftop solar panels—that can power it at your home.
Taking the new-model, high-tech car company concept a step further, several efforts are under way around the world to design new, clean, ultraefficient vehicles in a collaborative, open-source process. Initiatives such as the Germany-based OScar (www.theoscarproject.com) and the Open Source Green Vehicle (www.osgv.org) are tapping the expertise of hundreds of engineers worldwide to create a fuel-efficient, next-generation vehicle. The Rocky Mountain Institute has followed this model for some time, placing its Hypercar hydrogen FCV design in the public domain for improvement and tweaking by outside collaborators. We’re not sure what these business models or investment opportunities will look like yet. But bringing the open source process from high tech to the auto industry is an exciting development partially mirrored by the open-source efforts to modernize the electrical grid.
Related posts: