Tesla unveiled new all electric sedan called Model S

Official data on this car (although it might change several times before it goes to production) is:

Range: up to 300 miles per 4 hour charge.

0-60 in 5.6 seconds.

Deliveries are scheduled to begin at the end of 2011.

It’s designed so that you could swap the battery in 5 minutes. I guess, just in case if in the future there will be battery swapping stations, you could stop your electric car to recharge it at one of those stations, just like at a fuel pump, but instead of recharging, another battery pack is swapped in…  And off you go.

Some people might like the second trunk, which is located under the hood. I wonder where they put the engine. But it doesn’t surprise me that they managed to save some space for another trunk, because with electric motors - you could hide 2 or 4 smaller ones pretty much anywhere in the car. There are electric cars that hide them inside wheels! Model S doesn’t do that though.

It is unknown what options exactly will be offered and what they will cost. But it looks like even the basic configuration will have 17″ touchscreen in the dashboard.

In addition to huge touchscreen there is also 3G Internet connectivity. Might be optional and will probably require additional monthly fee, but I am still excited about the idea of having Internet access in the car whenever I want.

So what about the price?

Base price is $49,900. That is after federal tax credit of $7,500.

For the sake of comparison to conventional gasoline cars, let’s consider saving on gas over 5 year period, it would probably be about $10,000. It could be more if we forget about interest on such investment when you have to pay upfront, cost of new battery when you have to replace the old one, etc.

So I would say we are looking at a $40,000 car in conventional car terms.

That’s not much more than an entry level luxury car on the market today. At the same time I can see many people being repelled by the fact that Tesla is a new player on the market and nobody knows how this type of cars will depreciate in comparison to cars from other car-makers that were around for dozens of years.

That’s good progress in terms of price for pure electric cars. I think it’s awesome considering that there are not too many cars like that. I would still wait price to drop another 30% before I can call it completely reasonable.

MIT Researchers improved well known Lithium-iron-phosphate technology to allow faster flow of ions through material. This made it possible to create batteries that charge and discharge in a matter of seconds when needed.

Research is led by Gerbrand Ceder. MIT news site has a more detailed article about this research.

Now, having this technology available to electric car makers, means you could charge your electric car even faster than the time you currently spend fueling your conventional car. That would be great - that would eliminate one of the biggest pit-stops of electric cars.

According to Gerbrand Ceder, this technology could be available for public in just 2 or 3 years.

There are several electric vehicles that you can buy right now, but the problem is that those that are not too expensive, are very limited in power and speed.

For example, Tesla is around $100,000 and Zap cars are under 40 MPH so far.

Aptera can deliver highway speeds and it’s not very expensive. They promise to deliver first electric models in 2009. Here is a new video featuring the vehicle.

Obviously cars get into accidents from time to time regardless of the propulsion technology, whether it’s a mainstream gas engine or a relatively-rare-to-find hybrid…

From talking with my insurance agent, I was surprised to know something new about owning a hybrid car: apparently a hybrid owner will have trouble finding a certified auto appraiser to look at the damage on his/her hybrid. There are just several of those in Massachusetts. I can only imaging how hard it is to find one in less populated states.

I am not picking on hybrids. I am saying that any drivetrain technology, especially combinations of two technologies, like gas and electric in hybrids, will need some time to sink in to infrastructure that we have to support the ownership. Like here it is auto insurance industry that needs to adjust to be able to effectively help people who need repairs with their new “cutting edge technology” vehicles.

The biggest culprit with electric cars is that currently there is no infrastructure for efficient (fast) recharging or the battery. There are advancements that Europe does in this area, but it is still far from being ready for mainstream. USA makes far less of a progress developing infrastructure for new types of drivetrain. Let’s hope it will improve soon.