Translation: The Zora will come out next year and it will be a hybrid just like every other cutting edge super car these days.

 

I'm not sure where the notion that a Tesla is good for only one or two drag strip passes comes from, but:


I hope you have the chance to run against a Tesla which has made two consecutive quarter mile passes.

Im thinking that you will see that it still has plenty left in it after such an effort.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCko9f_RRehHnvCLtsN6dFVA

 

no

 

It's not a C7 (or any corvette) but a Gen six camaro, and not a full EV but a Hybrid....

http://jalopnik.com/embry-riddle-is-...mar-1768973051

I thought it was interesting.

 

The Tesla with AWD is the real magic when it comes to hole shots, a cheapo Eagle Talon can also perform this trick, you could turn a Z06 into a AWD , but really what's the point?

 

Are you saying that you don't get the point of all wheel drive?

Or are you saying that you don't get the point in a good hole shot?

BTW, I wouldn't be surprised at all were an AWD corvette to be produced.

I've been a Vette owner and member of this forum for 13 years, and now also own a Tesla.

Dare I say, in those 13 yrs, I don't think I've come across a Vette owner in here who wouldn't love to have a better hole shot. Especially on street tires.

 

from your mouth to God's ears

 

I'm saying there is no magic in the Tesla , it is a $100+ car with AWD, a Eagle Talon with AWD is $80k cheaper and can leave it behind so far as hole shots. If the Corvette was supposed to be all about hole shots then maybe they would have put AWD on it, that's my point. Try pushing a Tesla around the track with a C7...the batteries overheat , the software says no go...

 

Oh, I see. So part of your position is based on price.

And you're using a video of a modded Talon with drag radials on it against a stock on stock rubber Tesla to make your point.

Well let's take your logic a step further. You do know that a modded C5 FRC, can be made to outperform your practically new C7 on a road course, yes???

Do you still think that a performance version of a Ludicrous equipped Tesla Model S PxxD would only be good for one or two passes against your stock C7?

The reason why I ask is because these three were put together and with several in between and over the course of a track day.

http://www.dragtimes.com/2015-Tesla-...ecs-28172.html

 

You have to have 95 percent charge and then wait 3 minutes between passes according to one of the car mags I was reading recently.

Electric is cool and has positives but negatives as well. My daily driver is a Chevy Volt and I couldn't imagine having electric only. Every time I blow by a Tesla on the highway who is trying to conserve and get to the next station I laugh. The early adopters are really understanding of the faults of electric and are able to brush them off while overstating the benefits. The general population will not accept the limitations in the same way nor will they overstate the positives.

 

Electric has it's applications BUT it's still pretty early in it's life cycle to resolve all the real challenges. As a hybrid option it's fine... but more complex and heavy....

Once they have the window glass act as a solar collector, I will buy one... then the government will have to tax sunshine. This can extend the range as you drive it on a sunny day... and if you park it in the lot in the sun, you can get a free ride home...

Next is the cold weather performance. Most electrics live in a warm garage as you have to charge them..... when left outside in the cold, a significant amount of energy will be used by the HVAC system.

Electricity is not cheap but apparently cheaper than gas with all the taxes our governments have slapped on gasoline. Here in Ontario, nobody in their right mind would heat their home with ELECTRIC and yet ELECTRIC is deemed to be great for cars...

And how do they generate the electricity ? Not necessarily better if they use COAL and GAS plants to generate the juice, infact it's worse for the environment.

 

Your part in bold is interesting.

I read it again. 3 minutes you say.

At a typical test and tune, or even a track day, how much time would you say lapses between the end of a quarter mile pass, going down the return road, and picking up your slip, getting back in line and before its your turn again for re staging for your next pass?

The 3 minutes of cool down you mention that is necessary to get peak performance between passes, sort of reminds me of raising the hood and applying ice bags and/or blowing fans onto the intake manifold or supercharger of an ICE vehicle following a quarter mile pass.

Also, the 95% state of charge should be put into perspective.

First off, that is to get the absolute maximum acceleration. But the car is still quite capable at even a 60% state of charge.

I didn't know that we were discussing range here, but your Volt is nice. How much battery range does it have? I ask because a Tesla P90D with Ludicrous has about 270 miles of range on a full charge and many, if not most owners charge at home.

But the Volt is s nice car.

 

How do they generate the electricity??? I don't care if they using hamsters on treadmills to generate it, that's not my concern. I'll let the EPA worry about that.

I'm only concerned about how much it costs me. And around here, it's dirt cheap. a little over 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Since I'm no environmentalist, but rather a car enthusiast, I couldn't care less whether the electricity obtained to run my car came from coal or diesel. As long as where it's being generated is not emitting polonium-210, or something such as cyanide or ricin into the air, well then I'm not concerned. My cammed Z06 couldn't pass smog were I living in California.

I care mainly about the performance and technology of the vehicle.

With regard to the rest of your post, well, 0-60 in 2.8 seconds and free to cheap fueling, all with a capability of seating 7, covers a multitude of sin, and for me just about any drawback you can come up with.

 

I think you have convinced yourself, bravo !!

 

I watched a Formula E race last year. I could not stand the whiney noise. I understood why they called it Formula E. The noise they make - EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! The most ridiculous part was they don't have enough power to do the race, so they pull into the pits and get another car!

 

I am not sure the Tesla Roadster was a dismal failure. I think in reality it was a prototype to prove the technology and launch Tesla into the market.

Their contract with Lotus was for 2,500 rolling chassis. At the end of that contract Lotus had changed their tooling in the Hethel Factory in the UK and they could not produce any more even if they wanted to. Given that Lotus is always on the verge of bankruptcy, I think that was a bit silly, but that's the fact - they fulfilled the 2,500 vehicle contract and ended the relationship

I agree with everything you say about Electric vehicles at the moment, but am very interested and excited to see the development of this technology. It makes no economic sense at the moment, but pretty sure most of us will live to see electric vehicles being the majority of new cars sold. Weight, range and charging are the main hurdles to overcome, but we are very early in the lifecycle of the technology. People who watched black and white 415 line TVs in the 60s and 70s would not have imagined 4K Flat Screen TVs in their lifetimes either

Mark

 

As for an E Corvette, I don't get it. I thought most Corvette owners pay a lot of money for a LOUDER exhaust - the roar of the engine and going thru the gears. Who wants an appliance you have to plug in? I love long trips - I pull into a gas station, fill it up, and continue. With a Tesla you have to go out of your way to find a charging station, and wait ...... and wait. It's kinda like the difference between barbecuing your meat on open flames, or heating it in a microwave.

 

Well, as much as I wish I could take credit for that, I can't. So before you congratulate or bravo me, I've been convinced, but I didn't do the convincing. I too was uninformed about EVs, indeed even had some of your same misconceptions earlier about Teslas. But I found out otherwise, and while I wish I could take credit, I can't.

There are a lot of misconceptions. Some of them are just as curious as some of the ones you stated in your prior post. Here, take a look below at another one.

Not necessarily. But because we are used to refueling our vehicles at free standing "filling stations", the concept of refueling one's vehicle at home, particularly a vehicle primarily used for daily commutes, is a difficult one for a lot of people to warm up to.

Many, if not most, charge at home. That said, I can count a few times that my car has been charged at a public charging station, including Tesla's proprietary Superchargers, which are the quickest ways of charging a Tesla. They have initial charging speeds of over 300 miles per hour.

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I know you're talking about traveling, and I'll get to that. But I should mention daily charging too.




I just took the following pic below a few minutes ago. I top my car off each night, and wake up each day with approximately this amount of range capability in my car charged at 90%.

I can check the level of charge, as well as control multiple features and operating parameters of the car in a variety of ways, such as from my smartphone, my Apple watch, my tablets, the car's onboard screen, or as shown below, from my Macbook Pro or other laptop.



My outlet allows me to charge at 28 miles per hour at home, at 40 amps, 240 volts. However if I wanted to spring for an even faster capability at home, I could buy a higher powered wall connector and charge at home at about 56 miles per hour, 240 volts 80 amps.

But since I charge while I sleep, and come nowhere near 225 miles a day during my daily commute, my current setup works fine. Because I plug the car in each time I pull it into the garage, in fact you can see in the pic below that it charged up 13 miles to top it off., i.e. I took a 13 mile trip after coming in from work today. Just about each time it leaves my house, it's topped off. (I say "topped off", but it's set to charge to 90% which is 226 miles. I rarely charge it enough to turn that whole bar green, i.e. 100%)

But I recognize that the concept of topping one's car off at home, or refueling one's car each time they bring it home, and having a fully fueled, or closer to fully fueled car each time you leave the house, is one which is foreign to many motorist. But catching on.



However you mentioned traveling. Well the times I do charge on the road, the Superchargers do the job rather quickly. The next set of pics below will illustrate some of what I'm mentioning here. This Supercharger was charging my car at a rate of over 300 miles per hour to start with. 372 volts 261 amps.

One other gentlemen mentioned earlier that he owned a Chevy Volt. Well I can assure you that it charges nowhere near 317 miles per hour at any public charger that it can be plugged into.

This is possibly where the notion of "wait and wait" comes from for some people. Chevy Volts, Nissan Leafs, Priuses, etc., on a common Level 2 public charger, can't charge anywhere near as quickly as a Tesla can on a Tesla Supercharger.

Of course the Volt does haul around its own gasoline powered backup motor as it has only about 50 miles of electric range and will give you 0-60 in about 7.6 seconds. and charge times are 13 hours on 120V and 4.5hrs on 240V.

13 hours to obtain enough charge to go just 50 miles on the electric motors, or best case 4.5 hrs to have enough juice to go just 50 miles on the electric motors is a bit long. Once you travel that 50 miles on electric, you're into the gas.

DC quick-charging such as utilized at the Tesla Superchargers generally recharges the battery to 80 percent of its capacity in around 30 minutes, as compared to several hours on Level 2 charging. (That last 20 percent takes a lot longer.)


When traveling, I charge to 100% before leaving the house. My car at 100% has a rated range of 253 miles. I believe that the longest rated range Tesla has a range of around 280 miles.

The Nav system will map a route along Supercgargers or a route can be planned to include other charging stations besides or in addition to Tesla's own chargers as well. The point here is that while the network still has a lot of growing to do, it is not a foregone conclusion that you will definitely have to "go out of your way" to get to the next charging station. That will depend on where you're going.

The Nav system will tell you how long you need to charge at any particular charging station in order to reach the next one. This is seen on the screenshots of my phone below while I was going through Cleveland.

You put in the address of your destination, the Nav system will calculate and map your route, drop a pin at each charging station along your route and tell you how long you need to charge at that destination before continuing to your next charging stop.



However as charging increases and nears capacity, it does slow down some.





The pics from the Tesla app on my phone, while my car was on the supercharger, show me the amount of time I need to charge at the Supercharger in order to have the minimum amount of juice needed to reach the next supercharger. Of course I'd charge for longer than the bare minimum were I on the road.

But my point here is you don't necessarily have to "wait ...... and wait" because you don't necessarily have to charge to 100% at each charging station you reach.

I'd be the first to tell you that an 800-1,000 mile road trip in this car would be impractical. But I'd feel that way about a road trip of that distance in any car. I'll fly if I'm going that far.

And as far as "going out of your way" in order to find a charging station, well, anyone who already enjoys taking long road trips in a car, or even if a long car trip or long car trips is or are on their bucket list, why would they have a problem with extending it by taking another even longer route, if they love driving and seeing the countryside from behind the wheel of a car so much?

The last part of this argument, must be similar to the one used by those who insisted that the horse would never lose out to the automobile. After all, who wants something that you have to stick a nozzle into and load with a combustable liquid, when a horse can simply be fed?

Interesting. Let's lighten it up a bit then and whet a few appetites.

You mention open flame cooking, well I know a little about that too Bob, and the analogy you use above, well, sorry but I have to say that it is not a very good one.














While a Tesla will take you down down the quarter mile just as quick, if not quicker than a lot of other gasoline powered cars out there, .....you just don't get results like this in the microwave, so that analogy doesn't quite do it for me.

 

Problem with the Supercharger is that it slowly kills the battery life.
I'm hungry!

 

Very cool.

If electric cars become relatively user friendly as to heat, battery life and battery charge duration, we will one day love them. Maximum torque just off idle is a car junkie's dream....

Teslas are cool, but they are still not great for long trips, supercharging shortens battery life considerably, and they are not great dual purpose track/street cars. Indeed, the gasoline powered supercars of today are the best dual purpose cars ever built. Also, batts are nasty and will need to be disposed of--not all of their bits can be recycled, so we'll see how that plays out. But, electric cars are intriguing and the tech is in its infancy.

For now, I just want to see a mid-engined Corvette become a reality!